‘He should not have lived, Eydis. You knew that. You sensed that.’
‘But I do live,’ the dark voice growls from Valdis’s lips.
‘I did not know his spirit would enter my sister, Heidrun. Tell me how I can force him to release Valdis. You know these things.’
The dark voice laughs. ‘It’s no good pleading with her, Eydis. She is as powerless to force me out as you are, my sweet sister. Tell me, woman. You walk through the world. You know all that passes. I charge you to tell me the truth of it. Did the farmer Jónas do what I told him?’
Heidrun turns and for the first time looks at Valdis and me. Over all these years she has hardly changed since the first time I saw her when she took us to the circle dance on the night of our seventh birthday, the night of our awakening. She has an angular but handsome face, though where most people have a groove above their upper lip, she has a ridge. But now her pale eyes are cold with a fury I have never seen in them before.
‘Pétur’s mares were seized with fright and they all galloped madly off, running further than any horse would ever do had it merely been affrighted by a human whipping it or a noise startling it. Pétur and his sons tracked them on foot for two days, but by the time they found them it was too late. They’d run over the edge of a cliff and smashed themselves on the rocks at the bottom. When Pétur’s sons climbed down they found some of the mares still lived, but their bones were so badly broken they could do nothing to help them except cut their throats to put them out of their pain.’
‘And Jónas’s daughter?’ I ask her.
‘Frída recovered, as you knew she would. If Jónas had listened to you, she would have come to her senses without the need for any healing herb or charm save that of time. You read her malady well. The cloud came from the mountain, not Pétur.’
‘And does Pétur know who slaughtered his mares?’ I ask.
‘He will,’ Heidrun says with an icy certainty. ‘His thoughts are creeping towards that knowledge even now. When he returned from tracking the horses, Pétur was in such a rage, he made all in his household swear on the Holy Book to say what they knew of the matter. His serving girl tearfully confessed that she had slipped out to meet her lover and thought she saw in the distance a man crouching near the stream where the mares come to drink. She couldn’t be sure and, besides, didn’t want to alert her master for fear he would demand to know why she was wandering abroad when she should have been about her work on the farm. Pétur’s sons searched the place where she said she had seen a man and found the death coin glinting in the stream. It will not take long for Pétur to discover who placed the coin there, and when he does, he will take revenge on Jónas and all his kin.’
This is exactly the outcome I had dreaded. If Pétur took revenge, then Jónas and his family would retaliate. Such blood feuds have been known to last for generations and involve even distant relatives and hired help from both farmsteads.
‘I tried to stop Jónas,’ I tell her. ‘But he would not listen.’
Heidrun’s expression is grim. ‘You had the power to stop him, but you didn’t. For as long as you and Valdis spoke with one voice, you needed no more than words to control the people. Even a gentle shower of rain if it continues long enough will persuade a man to cover his head, so you let your words fall softly on them and they hurried off in the direction you sent them. You had grown used to that and thought nothing more was needed. So you’ve let the power you were born with shrivel up like an unused limb. But now you must fight to make your words heard.’
My sister’s black eyes stare up at Heidrun. Her peeling lips part as the voice speaks through them.
‘Eydis can’t fight me. I tell the people what they want to hear, and so they will do it. Prince or pauper, priest or pagan, a man will always listen to the words that echo the desires of his own soul, and he will act on them.’
‘Who is it that speaks through my sister’s mouth, Heidrun?’ I ask her, trying desperately to ignore the mocking voice. ‘You above all must know.’
‘He was not born on this isle. Every man, woman and child whose birth blood has fed this land is known to me by name, but not those who come from over the water. The boy, Ari, knows where he comes from, I think, but he will not speak of it. He is afraid.’
‘And so he should be,’ the dark voice says with pride.
Heidrun ignores him. ‘But though I don’t know his name, I know what he is. He is a draugr, a nightstalker.’
A cackle of mocking laughter pours from my dead sister’s lips and echoes from the walls of the cave as if the man has a hundred brothers hovering behind him in the shadows.
A deathly fear grips me. I sensed from the moment they brought him to me that his life was not of this world. But I refused to trust my own gift. As long as I could convince myself he was only a man, I could go on believing that if only I could make his body live, then his spirit would leave my sister and possess its earthly home once more, but now I know it will take far more than that to force him out of her.
‘Heidrun, tell me what to do. Tell me how to save Valdis.’
She walks across to the pool of bubbling water and for a long time says nothing as she gazes into its clear depths. The palms of her long hands move over each other as if she is grinding something between them.
I wait in silence. Valdis’s head swivels round in the direction of the pool. The draugr is waiting too.
At last Heidrun turns back to face us. ‘You know already the man’s body must be kept alive, if his soul is to leave your sister, for only when his body and spirit are reunited can the wrong which has been done to this man be undone and he can be freed. But his body can’t live long without his spirit inside it. Soon it will be past the point where the spirit can re-enter it. You must heal the physical wounds, and you can. You possess that knowledge and skill, if you will use it.’
Once again she makes the grinding motion with her palms. ‘But, Eydis, you must know that only those who are themselves dead can force his spirit to return to the body, only they can control him for he comes from the realm of the dead. You must summon a door-doom, a door-doom of the dead who walk. They shall pass sentence upon him. Only their judgment can rule him. I cannot help you bring their spirits here. I don’t have the power over them, but you do.’
‘But I do not. You above all people know that I do not!’ I seize my chain and strike it furiously against the iron hoop about my waist. The clang echoes from the walls of the cave. ‘Have you forgotten, Heidrun, I am bound by iron? They did this to us so that we would have no power.’
‘No power to send your spirit out into the world. But there is much you can do in this cave.’ She points with a long, sharp finger towards my sister. ‘Remember, a band is fastened about her waist too. As long as she is bound by iron, so too is the spirit that infects her. You and he are matched in your limitations and your strength. Only your fear of him can make you weaker.’
‘But she does fear me,’ the dark voice growls. ‘Even bound by iron I am three times stronger than her. I can sense her every feeling. I know her most fleeting thought. I know her more intimately than any lover and can be that too – her lover, her master, her destroyer. I have not even begun to show her what I can do.’ Valdis’s head twists around to gaze first at Heidrun and then at me with those great cavernous black eyes.
But Heidrun ignores the voice as if it had not spoken. She walks away across the cave floor as noiselessly as she entered. Is that all she is going to tell me, all the help she will offer me? Does she not understand that I am trapped alone with this creature? I need her. I desperately want to beg her to return, but I cannot, for then the draugr will know how much I fear him.
Heidrun pauses beside the rocky outcrop which screens the passage to the entrance. ‘If he escapes this cave he will bring terror and death to every hovel and farmstead across the land. Where he crosses a threshold by night not a man, woman or child in that dwelling will be found alive come dawn. Where he walks along a path, no human
soul who crosses that track will live long enough to reach home. You must send him back to his body, while you are both bound by the iron. That is your only hope and it is the only hope for the hundreds of innocent men, women and children who will lose their lives if you fail. If he is freed from the iron, neither you nor anyone will be able to stop him destroying every living thing in his path.
‘But there isn’t much time, Eydis. The mountains are stirring again. The rivers of fire will run. Remember the black cloud that struck Jónas’s child? You spoke the truth about that cloud. You know what it means. The mountain has spoken, and soon the pool in this cave will answer it. When it does, you will know time is running out – for all of us.’
Chapter Eight
In the later half of the thirteenth century a Mongol emperor was so passionate about hunting with falcons and gyrfalcons, that he ordered the sides of a valley near the palace to be sown with a huge variety of grains to help breed more wild partridge and quail for the hunt. Near his palace in Chandu he enclosed a park with rich grazing and many streams in which he kept deer and goats which were bred purely to feed the two hundred falcons kept there during their moult. He also kept eagles for hunting wolves.
Every year in March the emperor went to Manchuria for the great hunt, taking ten thousand falcons and an equal number of soldiers to guard the hunting birds. The emperor rode out in a pavilion covered with cloth of gold and lined with lion skins, which was borne by four elephants. Inside he kept his twelve favourite gyrfalcons and twelve favourite officers to amuse them. When those on horseback reported the sighting of game he would open his curtains and cast off the falcons.
When they finally reached the plains, a camp was set up for the falconers, nobles and the emperor’s wives, who also had their own falcons, and for a month they would disport themselves with hunting.
Each falcon bore on its leg a tiny silver tablet giving its owner’s mark, and a man known as the ‘guardian of the lost’ would set up his tent on a rise with a banner flying above it so that in the vast camp he could easily be seen. Any owner seeking a lost bird would go to him, and any man finding a lost falcon would take it to the guardian, so that the one might be reunited with the other.
Off the Coast of Iceland Isabela
Frist-frast – a pigeon’s wing used to stroke birds of prey. Stroking with the bare or gloved hands removes the natural oils from the falcon’s feathers and her feathers become soaked if it rains.
I am lying in a shallow pit. A searing pain, worse than I have ever known in my life, is burning through my chest. I can’t move. I’m too terrified even to try. I want to gasp for air, but I have to make my breathing as shallow as I can. I must make the men think I am dead. If they do they will go away. My baby is crying. But I can’t go to him. I can’t reach him to comfort him. They tore him out of my arms and I was powerless to stop them.
My baby’s cries cease and I know they have silenced him. None of my children are crying now. Perhaps they too are simply holding their breath until the men have gone away. They can’t be dead. Please don’t let them be dead! Even these murderers would not slaughter innocent children. I lie staring up into the darkness, listening to the wind wailing among the trees, waiting, biting back the pain.
The men have not gone. I can hear their breathing above me, hard and rough. I lie rigid, trying to stop myself doubling up as the pain surges back through me. Something heavy falls into my lap. I will myself not to move. Great clods of earth are raining down on my feet, my legs, my chest, my arms, my face. They are burying me in a grave, but I am still alive. I try to scream. But no sound comes. I push and push, trying to force the air from my lungs, but I cannot make a sound. I fight with every splinter of strength I have left.
My own scream woke me, and for a few minutes I lay trembling on my pallet, until the sound of the waves crashing against the timbers and the rolling of the floor convinced me I was safe in our quarters under the forecastle of the ship. Nightmares had haunted my sleep ever since we’d left France. I couldn’t seem to shake them off and I had no idea what they meant. Were they a bad omen?
I shivered in the biting cold and huddled deeper under the blankets. Since the departure of Dona Flávia and her husband in England, I had taken myself into the far corner of the passengers’ quarters, the spot once occupied by Dona Flávia, to try to find some shelter from the icy wind that flooded through the anchor holes. As we drew further north from the isles they call the Shetlands, the seas had grown stormier and the wind so bitter that I could no longer bear to be upon the deck. The boards were constantly slippery with rain, and the ship tossed so much that I was afraid of falling and hurting myself again.
The bruises I had received in France had all but vanished and my knee was healing well, but the slightest awkward movement sent a sharp pain flashing up my leg which often made me cry out before I could stop myself. One of the sailors, a kindly man, had fashioned me a crutch so that I could take the weight from my leg. But I was praying desperately for my knee to heal by the time we reached Iceland. How was I going to capture the birds if I couldn’t even walk far enough to find them?
Marcos, Vítor and Fausto had each come to me in turn, murmuring that they would gladly carry me to wherever I wanted to go on the ship, but I refused to allow them to carry me anywhere. All three of them made me uneasy. I almost longed for the return of Dona Flávia to shield me from their attentions, though her manner had grown colder to me after that night on the beach. Perhaps it was the way that Marcos the physician was constantly fussing round me, and not attending to her own imagined illnesses, but several times I heard her pass some remark loud enough for me to hear about wanton young girls and sluts, as if she thought me one of them. She never asked me what had happened in the forest. No one did, as if to do so would mean having to explain why they abandoned us on that shore.
I was relieved they didn’t ask. For I didn’t understand the events of that night myself, much less feel able to give an account of it to others. I could still hear that shriek in my head and I often woke in panic, thinking myself back in among those graves, until I realized where I was, and knew that the moan I could hear was only the wind in the rigging.
When I had fled that clearing, the shriek seemed to pursue me, as if something was rushing towards me in the wind, tearing after me like a kestrel stooping down on a mouse. Perhaps it was a hunting animal I’d heard, a vixen, even an owl, though none I know could have made that sound. Maybe it was just the wind shrieking in the branches. I’d once heard the wind whistling through a mountain cave and sounding almost human. But could I really have been that foolish as to flee from nothing more sinister than the wind?
But as I ran I’d been more concerned with looking back over my shoulder than with where I was going, until with a sickening jolt I found myself stepping into thin air. There was nothing I could do to stop myself falling. I landed at the bottom of a great steep-sided gulley. Dried leaves had formed a thick layer over the soil. But there were rocks sticking out of the leaf mould and it was against these that I hit my shoulder and in the same instant felt a searing pain as my knee twisted under me when I crumpled to the ground.
Stunned by the fall, I curled myself up into a ball and lay there whimpering, clasping my knee and fighting for my breath. For a few moments the pain in my leg was so all-consuming that I couldn’t think of anything else. If whatever it was I had heard in the forest was still shrieking somewhere, shock and agony blocked it out of my head. Then, as the full white-hot intensity of the pain began to subside a little, I heard a rustling of dead leaves and the sound of something slithering towards me. Some creature was scrambling down the slope into the pit. Still cradling my knee, I whipped my head around and saw the dark figure of a man standing behind me. In his hand was a thick branch. The figure raised the lump of wood high above my head, ready to strike down hard. I think I must have screamed. I covered my head with my arms, cowering away. I braced myself for the blow, but it did not fall.
Aft
er a few moments I glanced up, though I was afraid to lower my arms. The stick was still raised above me, frozen in the air, as if the man was debating whether or not to bludgeon me. Instinctively I hauled myself backwards by my arms, dragging my injured knee through the carpet of leaves, knowing even as I did so that retreat was useless. He only had to take a few quick steps to catch up with me and strike. But he didn’t move. Finally he seemed to come to a decision. He slowly lowered the branch and pushed back his hood, though it was still too dark to recognize him.
‘Isabela, are you hurt?’
He advanced a few paces and I shrank back, for he was still gripping the branch firmly in his hand.
‘It’s me, Vítor. I came to look for you. When you didn’t return to the cottage, I was concerned. I thought you might be lost or hurt.’
‘How … how did you find me?’
He made no answer but instead fell to his knees and, laying down the branch, reached for my injured leg. The gesture startled me and I jerked my leg away from him, a movement which sent waves of pain flashing up my body.
‘Your knee, have you cut it? Let me see.’
Reluctantly I held my leg still, but the moment his fingers felt it, though the touch was light, I gasped with pain and pushed his hand away.
‘I think you may have dislocated it,’ Vítor said. ‘But I don’t have the skill to straighten it. You need a bone-setter. We’ll have to get you back to the cottage.’
For the first time I became aware of my surroundings. The gulley I had fallen into was narrow but long, shaped like the hull of a ship. The sides were steep and though in the darkness I could scarcely make out the top, I could see from the protruding tangle of roots above me that even if I could stand up, the top of the gulley would be a good two or three feet above my head.
The Falcons of Fire and Ice Page 20