Not long ago the notion of nain-thralls had only belonged to the past — a subject for winter tales or summer-night songs — how, in the days of bronze, when no king reigned, the nain-thralls dug the brazen-ore* and forged the brazen-tools; how the green-sickness came upon Thule and all bronze died and Chaos was king; how the nains discovered the secret witchery of iron and were free men at all times after, only paying the nainfee to the man king who in subduing the chiefs succeeded them as Power.
Thralldom was still — or rather, again — the subject of song and story.
But who cared what dirges the nains sang as they toiled or what accounts they told as they lay on their beds of bracken in their imprisoned nights?
The swans fly overhead
And the nains see them.
The moles tunnel through the earth
And the nains see them.
Stockades do not wall the swans
And the nains see them.
Fetters do not bind the moles
And the nains see them.
The baskets of ore were emptied into hand barrows and the thralls carried the barrows to the forge.
Once the nains were free as swans
And the nains see them.
Once the nains were free as moles
And the nains see them.
The forge was a flat rock rising from deep under the ground. The fire burned upon a hearth of other flat rocks, raised to a platform of the same height as the forge. The lumps of ironstone (and the articles of sick iron) were placed in the fire and burned. Although the kingsmen walked to and fro in violation of the ancient compact, which excluded them as it did all strangers, they learned nothing from their observations that did them any good. All ores looked alike to them; they did not know which ones to discard. All fired ironstones remained mysteries still to them; they knew not, though the nains did, which ones to discard as too brittle and which to pull out with greenwood toolsticks to be pounded upon the forge stone. Nor did they learn (or very much attempt to learn) the art of smiting with the stout stone hammer, turning and beating, beating and turning — all the while intoning in the Old Tongue:
Pound it, pound it, pound it well,
Pound it well, well, well,
Pound it well, pound it well,
Pound it well, well, well …
because it was said, The sound of the voice is good for the iron …
• • •
Perhaps it was no longer as good as it once had been. Nothing seemed to be. Day after day the nains toiled to make new iron, hacks and spears and knifeheads and arrow points. And day after day the productions of — at first — the previous year were returned to them, rotten with rust, flaking and powdering to be melted down and made new and whole again. The previous year, at first. Then the irons of the previous half-year. Then the previous season. Then last month, fortnight — last week.
One sweating nainsmith paused and pointed to a red-sick lancehead and his chest, thick and thicketed as some woodland hill, swelled as he spoke. “Not a seven-night since I beat this out — and now look how swift the iron-ill has afflicted it!” And he added in the witchery-tongue: “Thou art sick, thou art sick. Alas and woe to thee and us for thy very sickness.”
And in his rumbling, echoing voice he began to chant and was joined by his thrall-fellows:
Woe for the iron that is sick,
And the nains see it.
Woe for the black stone whose red blood wastes,
And the nains see it.
He thrust the heap of rusted metal into the wood fire, deep, deep, till red coals and red metals met.
Woe for the king whose men take captive,
And the nains see it.
They take captive upon the paths,
And the nains see it.
They lead away in heavy ropes,
And the nains see it.
Captivity and toil lay waste the heart,
And the nains see it.
Captivity and toil lay waste the flesh,
And the nains see it.
The nain-thralls waste like iron,
The king’s evil is like rust,
The queen’s lust is wasteful, evil,
Evil, evil, are these times,
These days, consumed as though by wolves.
When will the wolf confront the bear,
And the nains see it?
When will the stars throw down their spears,
And the nains see it?
Confusion take these smooth of skin,
And the nains see it?
When will the wizards’ mouths be fed,
And the nains see it?
The nainsmith seized a lump of iron and beat upon it with the stone hammer with great, resounding blows; and with each blow they all shouted a word:
When! Will! This! King-!-dom!
Rot! And! Rust!
And! The! Nains! See! It!
*Although the presence of bronze as a crude earth is very rare, it is not unknown.
Chapter IV
Strange sounds he heard as he lay between earth and sky, rising and sinking, turning over and over again. Strange calls upon strange horns, strange voices, sounds. Pains, swift and passing like flashes of lightning, shot through him, again and again, then less often. The Painted Men were pursuing him; he hid from them; he hid in hollows beneath the roots of trees, he hid in the forks of the branches of trees, perched upon the crests of rocks, slid into the spaces between them. Always, always, he saw the Painted Men prance by, panting in rage and shame that he had seen their naked skin. Always, always he stayed quite still. And always, always, they passed him by. And always, always they paused, legs frozen in mid-stride.
And always they turned, saw him; he felt the blows; all vanished.
Years went by.
• • •
When he became aware that he was returning to the everyday world he said in his mind that he would be very cunning and not reveal that he was no longer in the other world. He lay very still. Perhaps the Painted Men were uncertain if he were alive or dead and were lying in wait to see. He could not, through his parted eyelids, observe anyone or anything at all, save for the green network surrounding him and through which faint glints of sky were visible. But he had a faint yet firm feeling that if he were to roll his eyes just a bit to the right — He did not; he was too canny for that.
Besides, his right eye seemed swollen so much that —
And then a hand appeared, small as that of a large child, delicate as that of a young woman, yet not either: in the dim green light and through only one and a half eyes the hand seemed not entirely real, seemed almost translucent, had something about the bone structure, the nails — how many joints were there — nacreous as the inside of certain sea or river shells.
The hand placed something on his puffed eye, something cool and damp and soothing.
… and without awareness of intent to do so, he put up his hand and took the other by the wrist and sat up. Almost, he had not held the hand at all. Almost, it was as if his fingers were encircling something which had dimension without having substance — a delicate flower, as it might be, in the shape of a hand — and it slipped out from his grasp as simply as a sunbeam.
He had never seen a perry before.
Something slipped off his eye — he saw it was a dressing of bruised leaves and grasses, damp as though with the morning’s dew: the perry’s delicate and almost insubstantial hand took it and placed it on the swollen eye again and the perry’s other hand took his hand, did not so much lift as guide it to hold the compress in place.
As the thin dew sparkling upon a cobweb, so did the perry’s garments glint and sparkle; as the shy fawn stands in the gladey underbrush, not quite trembling and not quite looking at the intruder but poised for instant flight, so did the perry stand at the entrance to the leafy bower.
Arnten’s body did not so much still pain him as it echoed faint reflections of remembered pain. Dim outlines of bruises he could see here and t
here upon his skin; he remembered enough lore of herbs and simples from his medicine-uncle to know that even the most puissant leaves or roots or grasses had not by themselves done all this work of healing: but the witchery of the perries, either intent or inherent or both, had aided them. At first he had had a fleeting thought that he might be in the hands of the Woman of the Woods, of whom many tales were told. To be sure, he had never seen the Woman of the Woods, just as he had never seen a perry — but his uncle had told him enough of each so that now he knew. His uncle who was his mother’s uncle. His mother whom he had lost.
Arnten, find your father.
His father whom he had never had. The bear he could not find. The man, the mocker (had said Tall Roke) who had “gamed” his mother. The bogey for whom the boys of the village had held him slightly in awe and so much in scorn. Because of whom he had fled for very life. In which flight he had all but nearly lost his life. And now lay here, back from the edge of death, in the company of a creature far more fey than any nain, who spoke no word and barely looked at him and barely smiled yet had felt that deep concern for him and even now trembled between visibility and invisibility, substance and shadow, staying and leaving.
This gentle presence touched the cords which bound his pent misery and long-contained sorrow and did that which heavy and brutal blows had not and could not have done, and he covered his face with his hands and broke into tears.
He wept long and without restraint and when he had stopped at last, he knew it would be long, if ever, before he wept again. His eyes were wet and his chest ached, but these were slight shadows which would pass. All his body aches had gone. Something had changed in him forever. He dried his eyes, including the one no longer swollen — and he was on his knees and rising when he realized that the perry was no longer there.
• • •
He was aware of hunger and thirst, but more of thirst. He was aware of something else, a sound that had been sighing in his ears for as long as he had been in this shelter which somehow the perry had made for him. Sometimes the sound was as faint as a baby’s breath; sometimes it grew almost as loud as the wind which carried it and sometimes louder, the rider overbearing the steed. Somewhere not so very far away was a river and now, in this moment of his great thirst (water perhaps needed to replenish that shed by his uncommon tears), great was the sound of its rushing.
The perry had stood upright, but Arnten found he was obliged to stoop, although certainly the grasses and the light, light withes would have yielded easily to his head. And so, while at the curiously woven opening, stooping slightly and about to go out, he became aware of two things lying almost concealed by the fragrant grasses of the shelter’s floor. One was the witchery-bundle to which both bark basket and knife had been tied by deft and curious perry-knots; the other reappeared to him as though out of his dream-world between the time the Painted Man had beaten him to the ground and the time of his reawakening.
He recalled it now. When he had felt (and doubtless had indicated) thirst, something had glowed and glittered in the air before him, touched his lips and he had drunk. He had in his semi-thoughts believed it a fragment of a rainbow conveying the cooling rainwater to his lips; or a gigantically distended drop, suffused with multicolored lights, distilling into water on his lips and tongue. Now he saw it to be, less fantastically but not much less wondrously, a flask of some substance unfamiliar to him. Light passed into it and through it and he voiced wordless surprise on observing that he could see through it! What he saw was subject to a gross distortion. The flask was iridescent as the fingernails of the perry or the interior of certain shells, shining with a multitude of colors which shifted and changed. And it weighed much less than a vessel of earthenware of the same bulk. He marveled, but did not stop for long to do so; he placed it in the basket along with the witchery-bundle (knife again by hip); he considered what its name might be. For present identification alone he deemed to call it perryware.
And then he stepped outside, ready to seek his stream.
The sound of the river was quite strong outside the small grass shelter, shelter so slight that seemingly a fawn could have crushed it by rolling over, now that the protecting presence of the perry was withdrawn. He saw no traces of a fawn, but pausing a moment and wondering what had cropped the small measure of meadow, greenery and flowery, he saw the pellet droppings of the wild rams and — his eyes now opened — here a shred and there a fluff of their wool. His uncle had at one time amassed a small heap of their hooves (begged, doubtless, from hunters) which lay a long while in a corner, oily and strong-smelling. Once a nain had come to trade new iron for old and the rams’ hooves had vanished — but for what consideration and for what purpose he had never asked and never learned.
The wind brought the river sound stronger, nearer, to his ears; the wind brought a scent of flowers, too. He was on a downward slope and in a moment, following the land contours, he found himself wading through the blossoms — first they were under his feet, then around his ankles; then they touched the calves of his legs, his knee — and he brushed them away from his face. Glancing at his hands, he saw blood.
Astonished, he looked around. Each clump of flowers grew from a fleshy green pod. Pod? Paw? There had been a wild catton in the village once, though not for long. Taking amiss being prodded with a stick as it lay stretching with paws outthrust, out from those paws it thrust its claws and struck — once — twice — at its tormentor. Who in one moment more had crushed its skull with a rock. So now, even as he half-halted his movements he saw a cluster of flowers dip down toward him, thrust out a sheaf of thorns and rake his chest with them. And then another. And then another. His arms, his legs, his back — he cried out, looked back, was struck again, flung his arms up before his eyes and staggered forward, raked with thorns and racked with pain. Then vinelets wrapped around his ankles —
And then, for a long moment, nothing.
• • •
Cautiously he opened his eyes. At once his ears seemed to open, too. There was a deep, intent humoring in the air. He saw the thorn-paws of the thickets sway and waver. He saw them droop. He saw a swarm of bees spread out, circle; saw, one by one, the thorns draw back into their pods; saw the flowers open wider. Saw each bee select its first flower, mount, and enter, heard the bumbledrone alter in pitch and quicken. Saw each plant stretch itself taut, then begin a slow undulant motion.
Saw himself utterly forgotten and ignored.
Once again had the wary feeling of being watched.
Saw nothing.
Made his way unvexed to the water, kneeled and drank.
Here the water rushed noisily over the rocks, there it eddied and circled silently into pools, out farther it glided with a joyful clamor along its main channel; then paused and murmured thoughtfully among the reeds. Everywhere it sparkled — in his cupped hands as he lifted it to his mouth, as it fell in droplets from his face, spun around sunken logs, made the reeds rustle. Something was trying to tell him — what? The reeds nodded.
Reeds.
With a movement so quick and unstudied that he sank one foot into water, he stood up, spun around and unslung his witchery-bundle — or, more exactly, the witchery-bundle supposedly left by his father — and spread out its contents in the sunshine. Fingers trembling, he unsheathed the knife and cut a fresh reed and laid it down beside the one in the bundle. Except that one was dry and one was fresh, they were identical.
Surely it was a sign.
The medicine objects restored to their coverings, he considered long what he should do. It seemed somehow natural that he should continue along the river; there, where he had found the first sign, might he not find at least a second?
At first he splattered along on the sand flats and gravel beds, the mudbanks and shallows of the shore. The river looked so wild, so wide, full of mystery (and, perhaps, menace). Here presently the salmon would come surging upstream, that was certain, but not now. What else might lie beneath those sounding waters was uncertain in
deed. Sometimes the forest came right down to the brim and barm as though the trees would dip and drink. Sometimes he walked beneath towering banks and bluffs. After a while he saw the river divide and flow around an island, the main channel to the far side, the hither side forming a quiet pool, the shore of which was a sandy beach. On impulse he stopped, scooped out a hollow, placed into it his bundle and his basket with the perry thing, covered all with his leathern kilt, heaped sand over it. Then he turned and walked into the water.
• • •
The shallows had been sunwarmed, but now the deeper and cooler waters began to lap against his legs, higher and higher, and he saw and felt the flesh about each hair creep into a tiny mound. He saw that hair was now growing thicker about his man-parts. Abruptly, with a slight gasp, he slipped deliberately beneath the surface and for a moment squatted on the bottom like a frog. His breath heaved against his chest. He opened his eyes. All was strange in this new world. Then something was suddenly familiar; he opened his mouth and only the sudden burst of bubbles reminded him that water and not air was his surrounding. He surfaced, took another breath, slid down once more. In the curious light he exchanged quick glances with a small fish, then bent his eyes to the river bottom. Green light wavered in the green water and rippled over the green stones.
Reed in his medicine bag, reed beside the water.
Greenstone in his medicine bag, greenstones beneath the water.
It was the sought-for second sign.
The boy-frog squatted on the sand, sand clinging to him here and there, and looked at the other two small things in his budget of wonders: the beechnut and the bear claw. Certainly the last was the sign of the Bear himself, and by now it was plain that what the Bear was saying was, Seek these others if you would seek me. Find these others and you will find me. In the way a scout leaves signs along a trail so that those who follow may see and know what his message is, so the Bear had left these signs — not indeed in any sequence set apart by space — so that one who followed after might follow farther yet.
All clear, that. But what was the meaning of the beechnut? Beechnuts were good to eat, though perhaps not very good. The black swine of the woods were said to be fond of them. It wasn’t clear what connection the wild swine had with the bear. Perhaps none. He began to feel confused and set his thoughts to tracing their way as though through a forest path: Bear — black swine — beechnut — well enough, by working backward he had come at least to some certain thing — beechnut — forest — trees —
Ursus of Ultima Thule Page 4