Foxmask

by Juliet Marillier

  “We are so ill-prepared?”

  Thorvald looked down at his hands. “I don’t like to see such potential wasted. There’s strength here, and talent, if we could just get past their attitude. I think I could do that, given the chance. Given the information.”

  “Hmm,” said Asgrim, sipping his ale. “And you could be a spy, though generally spies don’t march straight into the enemy’s headquarters demanding full details of his plans. Thorvald, perhaps you’ve forgotten what you told me when you first arrived here. Fishing, a storm, a profound desire to mend the boat and head for home at the earliest opportunity, wasn’t that it?”

  “This is another question,” Thorvald said. “You owe me some answers first, I think.” He felt a trickle of cold sweat on his neck: here in this isolated hut, it was all too easy to believe the tales of sudden, final punishment. It was all too simple to look at the pale, impassive features, the shrewd, dark eyes, and see his own reflection. Why don’t we work together, like and like? Father and son?

  “There’s a small difficulty, as I see it,” Asgrim said, rising to fetch one of the rolled sheets of parchment from the recess in the stone wall. “Sam wishes to return home, you want to stay. We don’t know the girl’s mind; possibly she is happy to wait for you, possibly not. This could be awkward to reconcile.”

  “Sam doesn’t care for fighting. He could go back to Blood Bay now if you’d instruct the fellows on guard to let him pass. He could visit Creidhe on the way, fix his beloved boat. Then, when I’m finished here . . .” Thorvald’s words faltered to a stop as the Ruler unrolled the parchment on the table, setting small stones on the corners to hold it flat. Asgrim moved one of the soapstone lamps to rest beside the drawing that flowed, meticulous in its neatness and complexity, across the coarse, cream-brown surface of the parchment.

  It was a map fashioned by a master, a map that showed the islands in every detail, curves and fissures of coastline, lakes, streams and sea currents, hills and dales and tiny isolated settlements. Here and there words were written, words Thorvald could read: Isle of Storms, Isle of Streams, Dragon Isle. Troll’s Arch, at the mouth of Council Fjord. Witch’s Finger. Out to the west, all on its own, lay the Isle of Clouds. In the south were islands with no names, realms marked only by a subtle shading of the pen, as if these territories lay beyond some barrier that could not be shown by image or text. They were the lands of the Unspoken. The small, neat script held Thorvald fast; he stared at the page, unable to speak. He knew this writing: he had seen it before.

  “Some of your answers lie here,” Asgrim was saying calmly.

  “This is a fine piece of work,” Thorvald croaked. He cleared his throat. Now was not the time, he must get a grip on himself. “I congratulate you.”

  Asgrim did not reply. His hand moved to hover above the shadowed isles of the south. “Such a chart cannot show all,” the Ruler said eventually. “It cannot show the years of failure, the deaths, the bitterness. Our enemy has a power we cannot match; my men know that, they have seen it. Their despair is not surprising. Each of us has his own losses: father, brother, comrade. I, too.” He bowed his head.

  “I’m sorry,” Thorvald said, still struggling to control his voice, now that he had seen the proof, now that he knew. “You have lost family?” Somerled could have married again, probably had done just that; a decree of exile was not necessarily one of total isolation. Strange, though: this possibility had never occurred to him. He might have a stepmother here and a whole tribe of half-siblings. He had imagined Somerled alone.

  “A daughter,” Asgrim said quietly, his fingers still trailing gently over the map, across the Isle of Storms to the empty realms of the north. “A girl every bit as lovely as that young friend of yours, with the same bright hair and innocent smile. Taken, despoiled, slaughtered. A boy, also. He was no more than a fool. His blundering efforts to put the world to rights set a dark curse on our future. He’d never have come to anything; he was too much his mother’s son. You?”

  The question came so abruptly after this flat statement of loss and bitterness that Thorvald hardly understood what was meant by it.

  “You have family?” Asgrim asked, gazing at him across the table. Between them, the map lay in all its complexity and wonder, the last piece of a puzzle to which its maker still did not understand the solution.

  “Yes,” said Thorvald, heart hammering. “But I will not speak of them until you answer my questions. The rules of your game are to be obeyed, are they not?” The moment he mentioned Margaret, the truth would be known, and everything would change. Now that he had come so close, he felt curiously reluctant to take the next step. As a stranger, it would be up to him to prove his worth entirely on his own merits. Far better, he thought, to take up the challenge, to make this rabble of dispirited islanders into a real fighting force with heart and discipline, far better to win the battle and then, only then, to make the truth known. I have achieved this, and I am your son. I will not disappoint you as the other did.

  “As you know,” Asgrim said, “this is a realm of secrets, of strange past, difficult present, unknowable future. We are reluctant to share our story; it pains us to tell it. I have watched you, waiting until it might be appropriate to reveal this tale to you, for if, as you say, you wish to take a role in aiding our endeavor, there are certain matters you must be aware of.”

  “And what have you concluded?” Thorvald managed to make his question nonchalant, as if he cared little whether he heard the tale or not. In truth, he could hardly wait. Asgrim was going to tell him the truth at last. His father trusted him.

  The Ruler gave his thin-lipped smile. “I’ve concluded that you may indeed be useful to me. I had thought your talk of expertise in arms merely a young man’s bragging, a wild exaggeration designed to impress. Your actions, however, and your evident commitment to improving the men’s efforts, seem to prove me wrong. If your will to help me is genuine, then I believe we can work together. If that is to occur, you must first know the truth.”

  Thorvald waited.

  “Understand,” Asgrim went on, “that it has not always been thus in these islands, the Long Knife people against the Unspoken, the battles, the hunt, the murder of children—”

  “Wait a bit,” Thorvald interrupted. “I know the purpose of the hunt is to retrieve a child, but nobody said anything about murder.”

  “It is all part of the tale; another thread in the long pattern of suffering. When our kind first settled in the Lost Isles, it was not thus. We came to the islands as exile, as outcast, as farmer and fisherman and hermit, all of us fleeing something, all of us searching for something. Bonds of a kind were forged; one cannot survive long in such a realm without them. We made our settlements and built our boats. We ran our stock on the hills, we scraped a living, we bred our sons and daughters. In those southern isles, the Isle of Shadows, the Isle of Dreams, the others dwelt, those who were here before us. We saw them little.”

  “There’s been talk of sorcery, of magic,” Thorvald said diffidently. “I was given the impression that this tribe you call the Unspoken are not entirely human.”

  Asgrim’s finger moved again on the map, coming to rest on the small, isolated shape of the Isle of Clouds. “We have long winters here,” he said, “summers of mist and storm. It’s a climate that breeds superstitious fears. I keep the men occupied as well as I can, but their imaginations tend to get the better of them. The Unspoken come from the same stock as we do. They speak our tongue. But they are not as we are. It’s thought there was an older race here, a race possessed of unnatural power and unusual savagery. They interbred and in time became one people: a people like none you have ever encountered, Thorvald. They are a scourge, a curse.”

  There was a brief silence while Thorvald decided which question to ask first. “There was some suggestion,” he ventured, “that this tribe prevails by the use of hexes and spell-craft. How can we counter that? I believe it is those charms the men fear, not the prospect of an honest battle.�
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  Asgrim gave a crooked smile. “This is a real enemy and a real threat. My daughter died; I lost my only son. I have known the pain of this conflict, as they all have. The ancestors of the Unspoken dwelt in these islands long before our kind sought refuge here. The lineage of these folk has given them faculties we do not possess, an ability to tap into a strength that emanates from the land itself. Those skills they employ to their advantage, with devastating effect.”

  “Winds, tides, weather,” mused Thorvald.

  “Exactly. Call it magic if you will; my men think of it as just that. It is beyond us to counter it, Thorvald. Each confrontation reduces my numbers further; and there are the children. That was the final blow. It is no wonder you see despair in these men’s eyes. The Unspoken rob us of our very future.”

  Asgrim sat down once more, hands clenched before him. At last Thorvald could see some spark of feeling in the coal-dark eyes.

  “Tell me the story,” he said, taking up the flask unbidden and pouring more ale for the two of them. Outside the stone hut, the wind was rising; the rain beat down like a many-toothed flail.

  “It is a sorry tale, Thorvald, a tale that has turned us old before our time. Once, we lived peaceably enough. They left us alone; we did not venture across the water to the places where we knew they dwelt. There were chance encounters from time to time, a sudden squall driving a boat to shore where it did not belong, a request for a sheep or two in years of bad harvest. There was tolerance between us, but no formal bond of friendship or alliance. There was a council of sorts, held once a year at midsummer on their Isle of Shadows. They are a people of many secrets; their ritual observances are governed by complex networks of laws. They would let no more than three of our people attend the gatherings: the Ruler and two of his chosen men. In my early days as chieftain here, I attended several such councils; Einar, too, has witnessed them. We discovered something of their ways.” Asgrim’s voice dropped suddenly to a whisper. “It was thus we learned of Foxmask.”

  “Foxmask?” This grew stranger and stranger.

  “Their priest or holy man. A visionary, a teller of ancient wisdom. At the time when I became Ruler, Foxmask was old. Old, blind and crippled. He did not venture forth, but they held him in utmost awe and reverence, as if he were a creature unearthly in his power, part elder, part feral thing, able to pass to them the wisdom of standing stone and deep well, wild beast and eternal stars. Foxmask was the center of their existence, the cornerstone of their belief. Foxmask kept them safe; he told them how to live their lives, how to survive. You understand, this crippled priest, this old blind man was but one in a long line of such seers. Foxmask is not a single individual, but a title; a position, one might say.”

  “Such as Ruler.”

  Asgrim nodded. “Indeed, though not a leader such as we appoint from among the Long Knife people. Foxmask does not bring his folk forth to war. He sings his wisdom: they listen, and follow the path he decrees.”

  “It sounds harmless enough,” Thorvald observed, thinking that, indeed, it sounded not so very different from the ways of Nessa’s people, another ancient race of island dwellers. Such folk cling to the lore of earth and sky, ocean and fire. Privately, he thought them doomed to be overrun some day by people more flexible in their ways, more amenable to change. This was not a sentiment he would express before his mother. He would not speak of it to Eyvind, who, Norseman though he was, was fiercely committed to the preservation of his wife’s ancestral culture. He had never aired his views to Creidhe, a child of two races.

  “Harmless it was,” Asgrim said, “until Foxmask died. That was some time ago. I was a young man then, my son and daughter mere children. It is the custom of the Unspoken, after such a death, to select another to take the seer’s place. That they do with some ceremony. But this time there was no suitable candidate. There is a circumstance of birth by which Foxmask is chosen; a test follows to determine his aptitude. If no member of the tribe fits this mold, the Unspoken are without ancestral wisdom, without the guidance they need to lead their lives, to survive in this harsh realm. There was no visionary among their own, not this time; and so they sought elsewhere.”

  “I see,” Thorvald said softly, never taking his eyes from Asgrim’s hard features, his tight mouth. “A child? This is what you spoke of, the stealing of children?”

  Asgrim shook his head. “We did not know why they had begun to attack, to sink our fishing boats, to raid our coastal dwellings, to howl their songs in the night and fill our heads with evil dreams. We called for a council; I sailed to the shore of the Isle of Shadows, with two others, and entreated the Unspoken to sit down with us and explain themselves, to try for an agreement. They drove us off with hurled stones and arrows of bone, with witching music that set our minds full of foul visions. After that we prepared ourselves for war. We countered their raids as best we could; I taught my own folk what I knew of battlecraft, and we tried to protect our fields, our stock, our boats. We lost many good men. The pity was, I did not understand what they wanted until they took her.” The Ruler’s control was slipping now; his voice shook, and lines of pain bracketed the severe mouth.

  “Your daughter?” Thorvald ventured.

  Asgrim nodded. “My only daughter. Not as seer: Foxmask must be of their own people. They stole my girl away by night. We could not fetch her back: wind and tide defeated us time after time. They used her, Thorvald. Waited only until she had her first bleeding, then passed her from man to man, so that the child she bore would be the son of each of them, the true offspring of the tribe. That is the hideous practice they follow. Sula bore a son for them, and died of it. Little matter to the Unspoken. They had their seer: Foxmask was reborn.”

  Thorvald cleared his throat. He had come here in search of answers; this was almost more answer than he was ready to hear. No wonder the Ruler seemed a little odd at times. This was a weight of grief and guilt to rival the burden Somerled had borne with him from the Light Isles.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, knowing any words he might summon would be inadequate. “You pursue this war now for the sake of vengeance? To make them pay for your daughter’s suffering?”

  Asgrim gave the bleakest of smiles. “No, Thorvald. I’ve no wish for more men to die simply so I can be at some peace with my conscience. My daughter is gone; no amount of blood-letting can bring her back. If it were up to me, I would seek to negotiate, to make terms for truce. Indeed, I have already attempted that and will do so again. It is not I who desires to continue this conflict, but the others: the tribe of the Unspoken.”

  “But why? They have what they wanted, their seer—”

  “Not any longer. For a little, there was peace of a kind, a peace that simmered with unease. Then, suddenly, Foxmask was gone. Stolen. The seer was removed to a place where only the boldest or most foolish could seek him. He was encircled by a barrier of protection only the cleverest and most devious could penetrate. It is so to this day. The Unspoken cannot fetch him back: the place where he is kept is forbidden to them. To set foot there is to transgress their oldest law. Foxmask himself lies above and beyond law; he may set his foot where he chooses. They say he still lives, somewhere on that western isle, and since their attacks on us are based on that belief, we must honor it, though his survival would be something of a miracle. The island is perilous, surrounded by the most treacherous of waters, studded with tricks and traps, a place we dare visit but once a summer when a particular conjunction of wind, tide and time occurs. And yet we must attempt it. Until we fetch him back, the Unspoken punish us by stealing our hope: by robbing us of our newborn.”

  “What? But that’s outrageous! How can you stand for that? Surely your warriors can prevent it, it would be easy—”

  “This is a matter that goes beyond the merely physical,” Asgrim said levelly. “It cannot be halted by sword or spear. A curse has fallen upon the Long Knife people. There is no longer a need for the Unspoken to set foot on our land, or to raise a hand against us. The voi
ces come, howling in the night. In the five years since Foxmask was taken, not one of our infants has lived to see a second sunrise. Unless we return the seer to his true home, our folk are doomed.”

  Thorvald could think of nothing to say. He had hoped to hear of weapons tonight, of campaigns, of strategy and advantage. To that kind of conversation he could have contributed much. This, this seemed like something from an ancient tale, part truth, part bizarre imagining. And yet it was conveyed as baldly as if Asgrim had been presenting him with tomorrow’s plan for combat training. “Who took the seer away?” he asked. “And who guards him now?”

  “Who took him? A meddling fool who should have known better. That was a dark day. We had believed the time of death and suffering over at last. That it was one of our own who betrayed us cut very hard. Because of him, Sula’s sacrifice was in vain. To the Unspoken this punishment is appropriate, I suppose—their child is taken, so they will rob us of ours, each and every infant, until we find Foxmask and return him to his true home. Without their seer the Unspoken are a dangerous force indeed. Without his control, their wild music wreaks such havoc as could drive us all mad. They cannot govern themselves, it seems, unless this living heart beats again to the pattern of their ancient lore, safe in the midst of their strange circle. I have witnessed this myself, in my futile efforts to treat for peace. There is one elder of the Unspoken who, in the past, was his people’s voice at the council, and spoke wisely, wild man though he is. Given the right conditions, covert meetings can be arranged between this elder and myself; there are rules to be followed, and it’s somewhat risky. I’ve been there once or twice with Skapti. Through this man I was informed of Sula’s fate, of the stealing away of Fox-mask, of the curse they had laid on us until the child was returned. The end is very close for us if we cannot achieve that soon. This is the purpose of our preparations, Thorvald: to travel to the Isle of Clouds, to do battle, to rescue this visionary and take him back where he belongs.”