by Jude Fisher
Saro fell to his knees at the boy’s side and gently turned him over. His face was untouched, his skin as clear as a spring morning. There was a slight smile upon his lips, as if he were asleep and dreaming of something pleasant. He was quite dead.
Virelai began to cry. Great howls of rage and sorrow welled up inside him and burst out into the air like bats out of a cave. He ran here and there, pushing at the wagons, pulling blankets and clothing and wet washing out of them in case Alisha was somehow hidden by them. Saro watched him, feeling dead inside. It came as no surprise to him when the soldiers reappeared: ten of them, most armed to the teeth, three with arrows trained on him. Their leader walked forward, brandishing his sword in one hand, and pushing Alisha forward with the other. The man with the wounded leg sat astride the stallion. Saro wondered how he had managed to subdue the horse sufficiently to mount him, then saw the cruel way the halter had been knotted around the beast’s mouth and neck.
‘That’s him!’ the wounded man – Gesto – cried, indicating Saro. ‘He’s got a magic stone on a pendant – he killed Foro with it: I saw him!’
The captain looked wary. This was what Isto had reported, too, and he trusted Isto’s word beyond Gesto’s any day of the week.
‘Take off that pendant you’re wearing and throw it down in front of me!’ he shouted to Saro. ‘Carefully, or I’ll gut the woman.’
Alisha’s hair was in wild disarray and there was blood on the side of her face. Someone had bound her hands roughly: even at this distance he could see with a terrible clarity how the cords cut so tightly into the skin above her wrists that her hands had gone purple.
Something in him made him want to use the stone, to sear them in its awful heat, to scour them from the face of Elda. All of them: Alisha, Virelai, the stallion; even himself. Such destruction, such oblivion seemed for a moment appallingly attractive, a blessed relief, a perfect escape. Then the moment passed. With shaking hands, he removed the pendant, and cast it down on the ground in front of the troop’s captain, where it lay on the grass with the cold, white, killing light dying out of it.
They kept their captives well bound and separate on the ride north, for fear they would somehow make spells between them; for if a simple stone could kill a man without leaving a mark on him, who knew what other resources these renegades might draw out of thin air? The pendant lay swaddled inside the captain’s saddlebag, wrapped first in silk – the blue kerchief his daughter had solemnly bestowed upon him when he was sent to the Jetra garrison – and then in a woollen mitt, in memory of the old verse his grandmother used to recite when putting away her special things, which had fascinated him as a child:
Silk and wool and soft calfskin
If you want to keep the magic in . . .
If it had been a calf which had donated its hide to make the leather of his saddlebags then it was probably the oldest and ugliest calf in history, Captain Vilon mused; but it was the best he could manage under the circumstances.
No one had ever carried old Festia Vilon off to the pyres; but she might be less lucky in these times. His mother did not seem to have inherited Festia’s wild imagination, if imagination it was; but he suspected that if he were to delve into strange practices himself, matters might be different, for beneath his fingers the old woman’s artefacts had buzzed and throbbed as if alive. He knew what was inside – his long-dead grandfather’s fingerbones, some pieces of crystal and two soft, amorphous lumps of yellow metal reputed to have come from another land and another time – keepsakes, more than charms, which the old woman took out and stroked and muttered over every day, which seemed to keep her happy and did no one any tangible harm. But the memory of that odd sensation was why he had no intention of touching the Vingo lad’s pendant himself.
The soldier he had sent to retrieve the thing had refused, until he had held a dagger to the man’s jugular; but the stone had done nothing at all, just lain in the trooper’s trembling, sweaty palm like the harmless, insensate thing it most probably was in all but a witch’s hands.
Sitting astride the dead man’s horse, his hands bound and a smothering bag tied over his head in which someone had recently kept an overripe cheese (some nonsense about the searing power of a witch’s eyes) Saro wished for death. Clutching Virelai’s arm when the soldiers had appeared had undone him entirely, for the chaos of panic which had churned through the pale man had travelled swiftly through the contact between them and swept him screaming away beneath its awful tide, made him limp and lifeless, unable to defend himself, let alone anyone else. Even now he could still ‘see’ the images which had filled the sorcerer’s mind: Virelai himself flayed and tortured over his loss of the cat; thousands of nomads set upon wheels of fire or pressed beneath great stones, as if their magic was some essence within them which could thus be extruded.
And this was not the worst of it.
Back in himself again, Saro knew the true depths of despair. What happened to him, to Virelai; even to the martyred nomads was nothing in comparison with what lay in store for Elda. He had had an intimation of the horrors to come: when old women and beardless boys could be hacked down and tormented without conscience or reprisal, the world was already fatally tainted, poisoned, awry. Power in the wrong hands – no, he corrected himself, recalling the ease with which he had erased the soldier’s life – in any hands, was an abomination. And now the pendant was travelling north to Jetra where it would be taken to the Lord of Cantara, complete with reports of its lethal abilities, and everything he had seen – the terrible scouring of the world – would surely come to be. And yet it was not that previous nightmare which haunted him now: it was not Tycho’s face which he saw gloating over the death-stone, its virid rays making a ghastly mask of his avid, moonlike face; but Tanto Vingo’s: his brother’s.
‘How can I bear to see the future unfold, and know I could have prevented it?’ he thought miserably. ‘Lady Falla, if you hear me, if you truly are in the world, prove it to me and take my life now. Snuff me out like a candle’s flame and let me pass into the darkness, for I wish to exist no longer.’
He waited, silent beneath the suffocating hood; but his prayer remained unremarked and unanswered.
Thirty-one
Sanctuary
‘Are you quite mad?’
The voice which hissed in his ear made him leap more violently even than the hand which grasped his shoulder with fingers of iron. Caught in the act of pitching his latest victim over the stern, Fent Aranson whirled around to confront his discoverer.
Aran Aranson’s eyes were dull with horror and set in deep black rings born of exhaustion; but a grim light flickered in them, like the embers of a peat-fire. He stared from the pale, narrow face of his son out into the dark, spooling waters of their wake. There was no chance for the fallen man; the waves had closed over Bret Ellison’s head and he was well on his way to Sur’s feasting table now.
‘I knew it was you,’ he said quietly. ‘I have known for days. Ever since we lost Tor Bolson, though I never seemed to be watching at the right time to see it with my own eyes. I have kept asking myself why I am cursed in this way, but for that I can find no answer. Tell me, Fent, why have you murdered these men?’
Instead being weighed down by fear and guilt, Fent shone as if lit with an inner light at the chance to talk about his crimes. His pale skin glowed like the moon itself and crazed blue starlight shot from his eyes.
‘He requires only the three,’ he said cryptically. ‘The madman, the giant and the fool.’ The wide grin he gave his father was proof enough of which of the three Fent himself might be; and after that, he would say no more.
Aran Aranson led his youngest son to the mast and bound him there with soft but strong cords, having first removed the remaining harpoon to another place of safety. Urse was the only other allowed to tend him: they fed him and twice a day untied him so he could make his ablutions. The Master of Rockfall would answer no questions from the crew as to why he had taken these measures; but thereaf
ter no man disappeared in the night, and people drew their own conclusions.
The ice closed in, the black, watery leads between the floes becoming shorter and narrower and less easy to navigate. The light seemed to lie forever just above the far horizon, a beckoning band of violet and blue which promised another life, another world, just out of reach. In the hours of full darkness, the Navigator’s Star seemed to hang directly overhead: but did it signify a beacon or a warning? It was so cold, men barely spoke for fear of losing the little warm breath their bodies contained. They wrapped themselves in all they owned. Any exposed skin became reddened within moments; left for longer, it turned white, then numb. Each man asked himself in constant, inward monologues why he had come here, what madness had invaded his soul that he had voluntarily taken up Aran Aranson’s invitation. No one had a satisfactory answer for himself: the lure of gold and wealth seemed pointless and nonsensical in this inimical place. Mere survival gradually overtook all other goals; but even survival required some form of forward movement, and there were many days when they made hardly any progress at all. The wind fell away, and rowing became difficult, for lack of open water for the oars to scull or through their own lack of strength. Spurred on only by Aran Aranson’s singleminded will toward their mythical destination – a place most of them had long since given up believing in – they used the oars as poles to push the ship through shallow channels, they pressed the ice-breaker into sheets of ice which bowed and then fractured, giving way to the forward momentum of the ship; they slipped into the wake of great bergs which carved their own aimless courses through the ice; and all the time they despaired.
At last, the floes closed in altogether so that the much-vaunted ice-breaker could gain them no further headway. The Long Serpent ground to a creaking, protesting halt, its bow rammed hard into a great floe, and the ice crowded all around to engulf the vessel in its inexorable embrace. Nothing they tried could free them: they were stuck fast. The Master of Rockfall waited a day to see whether the movement of the ice would open up a channel; but instead the ice began to crack the ship’s timbers. There was no choice. ‘Get everything off the ship!’ Aran shouted and, together, they evacuated everything of practical use – the remaining ship’s boat, the kegs of meat and barrels of water (solid frozen now and bursting the iron-bound seams), the weapons and spars; the shrouds and halyards, even the great dark sail.
With this last, they fashioned a tent, using the mast as its central pole and roped it taut to great boulders of ice. They made ice walls to seal its base, and ice beds and chairs inside. They furnished these with whatever furs and cloaks and sealskins they were not already wearing; they salvaged any wood they could for fires.
This purposeful activity kept them warm and occupied for a day under a sun which gave off such a thin, pale light that the whole world lacked shadows. It was an eerie, luckless, limbo place; and the gradual dying of their ship as the ice took it in its giant, crushing fist filled the air with ominous banshee sounds, so that many of the crew plugged their ears with wool and sang to themselves to mask the noise.
While his men rested, Aran Aranson sat for a long while and watched as the ice devoured the ship which had carried all his dreams. Then he took aside Mag Snaketongue, Pol Garson, Urse One-Ear and Flint Hakason, the most experienced men on his crew. ‘We cannot stay here,’ he said. ‘Here, we will subsist on our few stores, then on whatever we can catch or find; and then we will die, one by one and horribly. There is little chance of rescue so far north: the only others who will venture here will be those like ourselves, bound on an expedition for the Hidden Isle, with little wish to take on board castaways with whom to share their few provisions.’
Urse nodded slowly, having already reached this conclusion for himself. Pol Garson nodded. ‘This is a land which devours both ships and men,’ he said. ‘But if we cannot stay here, where can we go?’
‘Onward, to Sanctuary,’ Aran replied. ‘Overland.’
‘Over the ice?’ Flint Hakason sounded appalled.
‘But we do not know where Sanctuary is, even if it exists,’ said Mag Snaketongue, voicing all their thoughts.
‘I have a map,’ said the Master of Rockfall proudly. He drew the piece of battered parchment out from the interior of all his layers of clothing and unrolled it in front of them, crouching down to flatten it against his thigh.
They gathered around him to peer at this precious item. The Westman Isles and their surrounding seaways were recognisable to each of them, each section of coast beautifully delineated by a delicate and accurate hand; and the farthest islands and corners of the mainland were also thus rendered; but beyond these known landmarks the Northern Ocean gave way to a world of shifting ice; and who could possibly be expected to map such a mutable place so that a man might follow a straight course through it? And indeed, the northernmost quarter of the map contained very little useful detail – a wavy line here, an amorphous shape there; the foreign-sounding ‘isenfeld’ scrawled across one great swathe of white space; and at the heart of a gorgeously drawn windrose in the far righthand corner, a word beginning ‘Sanct’.
Urse reached out his hand to smooth out this corner of the map, but Aran jerked it away from him like a child with a jealously guarded toy. Untouched by the magic the artefact contained, the giant stepped back, frowning.
‘It’s a very pretty thing,’ he started hesitantly.
Flint Hakason was less impressed. ‘It’s completely useless!’ he snorted. ‘Is that what you’ve used to bring us to this godforsaken place?’
Aran Aranson leapt to his feet, his eyes ablaze. With one hand, he stowed the map inside his clothing; with the other, he grabbed Flint Hakason by the throat. ‘I am the captain of this expedition,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Are you questioning my judgement?’
Flint was a hard man, not easily cowed. He wrestled himself free of the Rockfaller and glared at him. ‘I’m not going one step further with you,’ he announced bitterly. He lifted a pendant out from under his thick fur cloak. ‘See this?’ he said, waving the intricately worked silver anchor in Aran’s face. ‘I will place my trust in Sur now, rather than in you.’
And with that, he turned his back on the other four men and stalked back to the waiting crew. There, he took a piece of string and cut it into a number of uneven pieces which he then balled up into his fist so that only the heads showed. ‘I’m leaving this fearsome place, and this cursed expedition,’ he announced, ‘and I’m taking the ship’s boat, some provisions and five of you, if you wish it. I’m going home. Who’ll come with me?’
For a moment there was silence. Everyone had seen the confrontation between Flint and the captain and they feared Aran Aranson greatly. But even in their devastated and exhausted state, they feared death more. Suddenly there was a great clamour. A dozen or more of the men, roused from their lethargy, clustered around Flint Hakason and began eagerly to draw out the pieces of string. When each of them had a length, the mutineer declared: ‘Longest win a place.’
Emer Bretison roared with delight. ‘Ha! I’m with you, Flint. Homeward bound.’
Flint looked less than pleased. ‘Don’t expect to get any more to eat than the rest, son, despite your great size,’ he warned. He looked around the rest of the men with the strings held out on the palms of their hands, then looked relieved. ‘Ah, Jan – looks like you’ll balance the boat a bit.’
Jan was a slender lad, no bigger than a girl, but with a whippy frame and tough, stringy muscles. When he grinned, he showed sharp canine teeth amidst his straggly blond beard.
In no time, it seemed, Flint Hakason had a boatful. Between them, they hoisted a keg of meat and a sack of hard bread into the skiff, alongside their furs and skin-bags, while Aran looked on, his brows drawn into a single black forbidding line. He made no effort to stop them.
Flint Hakason and his five mutineers shouldered the skiff. It was heavy with provisions, and they were tired and weak from the killing cold, but there was a new purpose in their ey
es: they were going home, even if they had to walk for days to find clear water. He turned to the rest of the crew who crouched uncomfortably around the sail-tent, rubbing their hands, avoiding each other’s eyes. ‘Cheerio, lads,’ he said with loud bravado. ‘We’ll have the fires burning back in Rockfall to greet your return.’ He looked to Aran Aranson. ‘I hope you find your magic island,’ he said, but there was no trace of sarcasm in his voice. ‘I hope you come back laden with gold.’
Then he and the five others trudged off southwards across the floe, the loose snow crust squeaking and crunching beneath the soles of their boots. Aran and his crew watched them go. No one said a word.
At dawn the next day, Aran Aranson made an announcement.
‘I am continuing with my quest,’ he said and watched as his men looked from one to another in disbelief. He cleared his throat and went on: ‘A captain without a ship is no captain at all: you may make a free choice as to whether you wish to accompany me or not, or whether you wish to remain here with whatever shelter and provisions you need until the weather improves and you can make your own escape, or until I can return for you and take you to safety.’ He paused, taking in their hooded expressions, their distrust. Yet these were the men who had travelled from miles around Rockfall – a hundred miles and more in some cases – clamouring to come on this romantic expedition. Now it seemed as soon as disaster struck, they had no backbone at all, were more afraid of the unforeseen death which might await them in the wide, white yonder than the certain death which stalked them here on this grim floe. From their silence he deduced that he would be making the long trek north alone. So be it. He felt disgusted by their cowardice, angry at himself for caring. He took up the harpoon, checked his belt-knives and patted his sack. He had in there a big hunk of flatbread, as hard as seasoned timber, some dried fish which had lost even its rank aroma in this freezing place, a bag full of smoked mutton which would have to be soaked and heated if he were not to break his teeth on it. Three fish-hooks, a length of twine, some seal-fat to smear over the exposed parts of his face. He was ready.