by Jude Fisher
Then he started down again. About halfway to the postern, he realised he should take something for Alisha: it would be bad enough turning up on the step of her wagon without warning, and with the boy, too: two new mouths to feed in the hardest of times, and that without taking into account the danger which would surely follow when the hue and cry was raised, and while a gift was no more than the merest emollient in such circumstances, it at least showed some degree of comprehension of the magnitude of the favour he was about to ask. At the third floor, he took a side door and ran down the twisting corridor as quietly as he could manage with the cat-basket bumping on his back and his bundle of belongings clutched to his chest. He knew exactly what she would most appreciate.
The kitchens were silent except for the snoring of the boys by the bread-oven: even though it was still some hours before the dawn, they would soon have to be up and baking again: the fresh bread and exquisite pastries to be had in Jetra’s castle were talked of throughout Istria with nostalgia by those who had experienced them and with longing by those who had not, but they appeared each morning on the nobles’ breakfast tables by dint of sheer hard graft rather than as the result of any simple magic. Virelai crept around them and into the cold-pantry where the rarer spices were stored. Hanging from the ceiling in swathes of aromatic green and gold and pink were garlands of safflowers, bunches of hemp and vervain and loosestrife; behind them, in great wide dishes of blue Jetran pottery was this year’s harvest of lion crocuses, each triform amber stamen removed with care and gathered to dry for colour and flavouring in a dozen exotic dishes. But Virelai knew another use for the powdered pistils. He picked up one of the heavy pots and poured the contents into a square of fabric, tied it tightly and discarded the vessel. Alisha would love the dish, he knew, but it couldn’t be helped. He stowed the parcel inside his bundle and turned to leave. His exit was blocked. In his path was one of the castle dogs – not one of the lords’ elegant deerhounds this, but a black-and-tan, brutish-looking mutt with a square jaw and an ugly head. Saliva dripped from its ruckled mouth onto the stone flags.
Virelai smiled.
‘Lie down,’ he suggested to it. ‘Sleep.’
But it was not the Master’s powerful command that issued out, but a weak and reedy facsimile. Instead of doing as it had been bidden, the dog growled and took a pace forward into the entrance of the pantry. Virelai took a step back. Inside its basket, the cat stirred.
Dogs were a species of Elda’s creatures Virelai had always found problematic. They didn’t like him, quite instinctively. In fact, most animals had an antipathy to him, for no reason which was immediately apparent, since he tried to treat them well and was not given to cruelty; but dogs had large teeth and could inflict considerable damage with one jaw-crunching lunge, much like the Lord of Cantara, and the anxiety they caused him seemed to communicate itself. When he could, he avoided them, or tried to make himself as unobtrusive as possible. This beast, however, had made it its business to seek him out and confront him: it would hardly be put off by simple trickery.
Fear made his mind spin. The voice was not working: what else was left in his armoury? The grimoire was well wrapped and in the bottom of the sack: it would take too long to extricate it and find a relevant charm. Even then he would need the cat’s cooperation; and the idea of removing the cat in front of such a monster was the sheerest folly. His brain worked feverishly. A tincture of the pistils he had just stolen would cause drowsiness and worse: but he had neither the time nor the means to effect such a treatment. Since all gentler solutions were closed to him, the only course left seemed that of mindless violence. He looked desperately around for anything that might serve as a weapon. Glassware; pottery; dried flowers. It was hopeless. The wished-for rolling pin, ladle or long meat-knife was nowhere to be seen. The dishes were heavy, it was true; but shattered pottery and the chaos that was likely to ensue if he did not kill the dog outright meant certain discovery, capture and the failure of his plan. And with the expensive herb stashed in his pack, a charge of theft to answer.
The dog began to make a bubbling, deep-throated growl. Its ears flattened against its skull. Virelai watched its rump bear down and begin to waggle in a manner that might have been comical, had it not so obviously heralded attack. Without another thought about possible consequences, he picked up the biggest dish he could lay hands on and hurled it with all his might at the beast.
Jetran pottery was famed throughout the civilised world for its elegance and the startling blue of its glaze, which was unique to the potters of the Eternal City. The word for ‘blue’ in the ancient tongue of the Tilsen Plain was the same as that for ‘sky’, specifically the deep, unflawed blue of a seven-month sky. What it was not famed for was its sturdiness: the bowl struck the dog square on its massive skull and broke into hundreds of brittle shards. Saffron scattered everywhere, coating the exposed shelves of the pantry, the mutt’s vast paws; the floor. But if Virelai had hoped the thing would be distracted by the aromatic pollen, if not by the missile itself, he was to be sadly disappointed.
Enraged by the thump on its head, which had damaged it only in serving to make it bite its tongue, and confused by the yellow dust that invaded its nostrils and caused it to sneeze, the mutt came grimly on, spraying drool and blood as it advanced. Virelai swung the cat-basket around in front of him. It was a cowardly act, and probably a futile one, but it was all he could think of.
Dog and wicker collided with such force that the sorcerer was thrown backwards off his feet, grazing his elbows on the shelving on the way down and bashing his head with a painful thud on the cold stone floor. There, he found himself trapped by the long basket which had wedged itself crosswise between the narrow walls, and by the immense weight of the dog bearing down on top of the basket. Obscure hissings and growlings filled the air, and then the basket burst apart so that he could feel the beast’s feet churning into his exposed belly. All the breath rushed out of his lungs; his vision began to speckle and he thought he might vomit. Just as he had decided this was how he would die – ignominiously, on the floor of a pantry, in the act of stealing some herbs in the middle of the night, his throat ripped out by some rabid mongrel – there was a sudden release of pressure. Breath returned, followed by a distant whimpering which might have been his own: he was so disorientated it was hard to tell.
After a few moments’ blessed silence, voices sounded out in the kitchens; though whether it was merely the sleepy conversations of the baker-boys, or others wakened by the dog’s din, it was impossible to tell.
Virelai sat up gingerly. Of the dog there was no sign, except for the slick pools of blood and slobber it had left on the flagstones. Bits of broken wicker lay strewn around the floor. Bëte was gone.
In her place was the Beast: lion-sized and as black as night. Its fangs were red, its eyes knowing.
Get up, it said into his mind, and his bowels quivered. Behind you there is a door into the outside world. Open it.
Virelai moved his head minutely, not daring to take his eyes off the great avatar for fear it would try to rip his throat out, too. Elda knew, he deserved such a fate for thrusting the defenceless cat it had been but moments before into the path of a savage cur. Did the Beast it had become think in such a manner? Did it harbour a grudge? If so, his life was surely forfeit.
Hurry.
By levering himself up on the shelves, Virelai managed to stand. Feeling more confident now that he was on his feet (though there was little logic to this, since the Beast could move a thousand times faster than he could in the event of an attempted escape) he turned and surveyed the back of the pantry. There was indeed – he could just spy out of the corner of his eye – a tiny door there, closed with a simple iron latch. Stupid not to have noticed it before.
The sound of voices in the kitchen got louder and suddenly the Beast was in the pantry with him, its cool fur and hot breath pressed up against him. Shuffling backwards away from the thing, Virelai retrieved his pack and slung it awkwardl
y over his back. Then, after a moment’s thought, he reached up and took down two large bundles of the dried hemp and stowed them in the bundle as well. He had a feeling they might come in useful.
After that he unlatched the door. It opened outwards with barely a creak and suddenly they were out in the night. A cool breeze freighted with the scent of oranges engulfed them.
Good, the Beast said. Now we go south.
Virelai blinked.
‘No,’ he said aloud, ‘it is north we must go: north to Sanctuary; back to your master.’
Something tickled the inside of his skull. It felt like having a moth trapped there, a small presence, light and unthreatening. It was, he realised after a short space of incomprehension, a projection of the humour the great cat found in this pronouncement. As if to clarify the matter, it declared:
I have no master. I am the Beast.
Twenty-one
Signs and Portents
By noon the skies were strewn with thin clouds fishtailing high above the horizon. A sharp offshore breeze had sprung up: if it held, the Long Serpent would make an auspicious departure from Rockfall, skimming out of the harbour with a full sail, on a straight course north. While the men boarded and loaded the last of their goods and the two sturdy ship’s boats, Aran Aranson stood at the prow with his face turned towards the ocean, every line of his expression intent, inturned. One hand rested on some unseen object nestled inside the neck of his tunic; his pale eyes reflected the sky.
Behind him, his crewmen now jostled for position, seeking out the faces of their loved ones who had gathered along the seawall. Some of the wives cried; some stood stony. A gaggle of older women stood off to one side, their arms folded, their expressions resigned. They had seen many departures such as this down the years. Sometimes the sailors came home; sometimes they did not. There seemed little pattern to the luck doled out to such expeditions, and nothing any of them could do to influence the outcome, though in their youth they had, like the younger wives, cut and braided locks from their own hair and bound them with blood and saltwater and tied into them every knot they knew to bring fair weather and safe passage. The folded arms, the resigned faces posed an unspoken question: Why were men such fools, that they were never satisfied with the good lives they had? What drove them to spurn the ground beneath their feet, the daily round of farms and families: what compelled them to throw all aside and chase off across the whale’s path on some elusive quest?
They knew the answer, of course: it was precisely those things which drove the men away: the familiar patterns of a life in which the greatest excitement might be damage wreaked by an escaped ram, by visitations of storm, or sickness. The younger women took their men’s choice to leave as a personal slight: some marriages never healed from the rift, no matter what riches might be brought home, what tales of glory told around the fire. Bera Rolfsen had been aware of her own husband’s restlessness these many years; she had watched him quell his yearnings, put his shoulder to the plough and grimly commit himself to routine and hard graft, the only outlet for his trapped frustrations the annual voyage to the Allfair. She had known it would come to this one day: that his grip on the life they had made together would break apart in some needlessly dramatic fashion. So she watched him now as he stood at the prow of the vessel which had cost their eldest son’s life, and though she appeared dry-eyed and impassive, she clutched her mother’s hand so tightly that the tips of Gramma Rolfsen’s fingers turned purple, then white, then blue. But not once did the Master of Rockfall look back towards the steading; not once did his eyes seek out the face of his wife among those who lined the seawall. Instead, he kept his eyes fixed on the northern horizon, out past the distant cliffs and skerries where ocean and sky melded in a grey haze, and his profile was as hard and proud as carvings of the kings of old, stern men with cold eyes and jutting beards who had died heroic deaths and left nothing behind but their images in wood and stone.
Then his hand fell away from the object hidden inside his shirt and it was as if a spell broke, for he turned suddenly, and seemed to be a man once more. His eyes swept over the scene behind him – the milling folk on the quay, the waving arms, the weeping women – and settled briefly on the figure of Bera Rolfsen, wrapped in her best blue cloak, the hood down so that her fine red hair flew in the breeze. He saw her catch it back with her free hand and their gazes locked for an instant. Something passed between them which might have been acceptance, or at least some form of understanding, then he tore his gaze away once more and, turning his attention to the crew, shouted, ‘Yard up!’ and strode off down the ship.
Men leapt to their appointed tasks and Aran gave himself over to the practical details of the passage out of the harbour – to the trim of the sail, the setting of the mast, the arrangement of lines and shrouds, the draw of the steerboard. He watched his crew, noting those who moved neatly about the vessel and those who lumbered awkwardly, and hoped the latter would soon find their sea-legs.
As they passed beneath the tall cliffs, black in the shade and patched with guano and lichens, the sail caught the full strength of the wind so that they skimmed past the Hound’s Tooth in impressive style and the Master’s heart filled with pride. He did not notice the raven which overflew the ship, heading inland on a sure and steady course, its primary feathers spread like fingers. Nor did he realise that his daughter was absent from the ship until well after they had passed beyond sight of the great pinnacle on which she sat, fast-bound, even though her eyes bored down upon him from that rocky promontory and followed the vessel with a burning, tear-glazed intensity until it had sailed far out of mortal sight.
‘Did you see her?’ Fent nudged the blond man with a sharp elbow.
Marit Fennson bobbed his head. ‘Still there, as I told you she would be. My knots would hold a charging bull, let alone a little slip of a thing like your sister. Will you speak with Aran Aranson for me now?’
Fent looked pained. ‘Best wait a while. I don’t want him turning back for her, or casting you off.’
A shadow fell across them. Katla’s brother looked up and found himself staring into the ruined face of Urse One-Ear. The big man grinned. This was a horrible sight at the best of times, and Fent was already feeling nervous. To see a man with barely half a face smiling at you so that his exposed eye-teeth gleamed like tusks made him feel like a seal-pup at the mercy of a snowbear.
‘Where’s the girlie?’ Urse enquired sweetly. ‘I have not seen her aboard, though her father said she would be here.’
Marit made himself scarce. Fent watched as he picked his way deftly through the coils of rope, the kegs and chests and cooking implements, to his oar-place and took a seat there, and knew he would have to shoulder this burden alone. Composing his panic, he tried desperately to conjure the plausible excuse he had prepared for his father.
‘She felt unwell,’ he started, only to stop when he saw the big man’s eyes narrow dangerously. He coughed and then started again: ‘She thought it best to stay with her mother.’
‘There was no sign of her on the quay; though I saw the Lady of Rockfall and her dam standing side by side.’
Fent shrugged. ‘Who knows Katla’s mind? She is as changeable as the weather.’
There was a long, uncomfortable pause, then: ‘In some islands it is believed that newborn twins are joined by a single soul, and that Sur must decide which child shall own it. Where I come from, lots are cast. One babe gets to stay suckling at its mother’s titty. The other is given to the sea.’ Urse leaned down, placed one of his bearlike hands on the lad’s shoulder and squeezed until Fent winced. Ostensibly, the big man was still smiling, but his scar-rimmed eyes were hard as topaz. ‘I should like to know how you came ashore again, Fent No-soul. Maybe it is time for the Lord Sur to see his choice made good.’
He held the lad’s gaze for two heartbeats longer, then released him and walked slowly away. Fent felt a chill run through him. He would have to talk to his father now, before Urse said anything.
/> He found Aran Aranson seated on an upturned cask amidships. A square of crumpled parchment, or some other substance that looked similarly yellow and aged, was spread upon his knee. The Master traced a fingertip over a series of lines marked in the upper third of the parchment, every so often looking out to steerboard and then back down to the drawing, which he sometimes moved minutely down, or to the right, as if orientating what he saw in the world to its flat representation on the map.
Fent breathed a sigh of relief and approached. His father was obsessed with the map: whenever he handled it, it was as if it absorbed him so completely that he was unable to exercise will or temper. It would be the best possible time to make his lie about Katla.
‘Da,’ he started, but Aran Aranson waved a hand in the air as if waving away an irritating sand-fly, so he stopped again.
The Master of Rockfall sighted the position of the sun, fished in his pouch for one of several lengths of twine which he selected with some care, then ran his fingers up and down the knots thereon, his eyes shut tight as if for fullest concentration. When he opened them again, he adjusted the position of the map, made a small mark on the paper with his thumbnail and smiled at his son. ‘Kelpie Isle,’ he said, indicating a tiny, jagged outline on the map.