Arnten came and sat beside him. “Surely, then, uncle, I made no sound,” he said, “neither did I cast a shadow, being in the dark as I was. And the wind is towards me. How did you know?”
“Nevertheless. You were near the moonlight and the moonlight drank of your presence, so to speak. And I felt your pattern upon my skin. It seems that you have grown much and are much changed in other things, but most of all I perceive that you are strong and well … See now these mandrakes: by and by, by moonpull and by music I shall draw them up without touching them, they shall of their own selves draw up their geminated roots and dance upon them. At first a little. Then back into the ground. Then later, more and more, and oftener. At a proper time, they will leave the ground forever and follow me home — ”
“A-dancing.”
“A-dancing. None way other.”
The old man looked at him in the silverlight, and said, “You are grown greater, and there is more to the more of you than size and flesh alone. It is my thought that you have found your father.”
“Found my father. Found my witchery-bundle. Found my bearskin. Found even this here, under my arm: ’tis within this case, a thing called fey horn — ”
The old witcherer said, softly, “Ah. All-Caller. So.”
He said, softly, “Your father?”
“ — Among his gifts to me … Eh? I found him, yes. And the kingsmen found us both. Set us to rip red iron-stone with the nain-thralls in the mine.” (Stink, and toil) “Thought to keep ahead of dying iron. Vain thought. Twas mined and forged only to rust and rot. And so we all did rust and rot there.” (Smoke of their burning bracken-beds, flare of guard-torches, terror, confusion, purpose stronger than death) “They be dead, now, nain-thralls and father. And, not for them, I’d be dead, too.” He paused, his face and his throat moving. “There was room for but one at a time through the scape-hole whence the hare had come. They pushed me through, first one. Then there was no more time, not for them, any. Never.
“And what say thee next, aye? ‘Their death-word to me?’ Aye. Twas of the wizards that they spoke. Feed the wizards. Aye …”
For all the Land of Thule had been fed with fear since iron had begun to rust and die, since the king had fallen sick, perhaps sick with fear; since his fear that foreign invasion would find him weaponless, since the exactions of his men had become entirely instead of merely intermittently remorseless. Since the forges of Nainland had grown cold.
Old Bab-uncle and young Arn talked long there in the silverlight. Through the silverlight and the shadows they talked and walked. Then walked without talking. Crawled a way, beneath ground. And once again were in the medicine hut.
For a long moment Arnten stood there, familiarity now so very strange, ears supping up the old familiar sounds, nose snuffing up the old familiar smells and scents, and — gradually, as they cast off the scales of darkness — eyes tracing the old familiar outlines. There on the low bed in the corner, something groaned and moved. All seemed as before.
“The old woman is not better, then?” he asked.
“The old woman is dead.”
“Ah.” No more to be said about that. She had not been entirely alive at any time he himself had known her. As to who, then, lay in her bed, moved and groaned, why, doubtless, the witch-uncle had found a woman, but not a young one — hence, one who groaned. But this neat construction vanished at once when the shadow-form on the bed sat up with a start and demanded in a man’s voice which Arnten knew he knew, “Bab, who is with you?”
“Tis well,” said witchery-uncle. He moved about the fire, and in a moment it blazed up.
Arnten gasped. “Tall Roke! I thought … I saw you dead.”
Roke gave forth a wry sound, half chuckle, half bitter groan. “And not you alone,” he said. “I was dead. And therefore to be left for the carrion-feeders … even though my breath came back to me, by and by, and I spoke to those who’d come to see how I looked, dead. Spoke? Cried, shrieked, babbled, begged — ”
“Tis past,” said uncle.
“Never past, for me! My breath wandered in the Dreaming World, I tell you, half-bear. I saw the breaths of the other deads — they came not to me, though, but with their hands they motioned me away; and with their voices, like the keening of strange birds, tis this which they said to me: ‘Back! Back! Go back, Roke! It be not your weird to be here now. Go back, and back,’ they told to me.” His hair, though it had been hacked unskillfully with a sharpened shell, was yet longer than Arnten ever had seen it; long and yellow it hung about his scarred face, and he brushed at it awkwardly with an arm and hand which seemed to move not quite right, but which moved.
“Wife and child have I no more, nor house nor friends nor other things which were mine. The dead lose all right to such, as we all know; nor gain they any such by coming back to life again …” His voice was low, deep into his body, and in his face there was something which Arnten had not seen in any man’s face before.
Arn felt chilled. And yet he did not look away, there in the medicine house which was more dark than light, smelling of mice and of mandrakes and of many half-dried plants, as Tall Roke, whom he had seen die, looked at him straight and deep.
“But in return for what I have lost, somewhat have I gained, bear’s boy; it concerns you, and as I look at you I see that much which is heavy has befallen you in the enacting of your own weird since last bloody day we saw each other.”
And he lay back down, but beckoned the other two near to him: and long they talked together, and sundry things they showed each other, while the small fire was fed small sticks, and the smokes moved slowly round and round: and sometimes the smokes found their way out, and sometimes they did not.
• • •
Light were the early winter snows, but heavy the mood of the hamlet. The common and customary tasks of making ready for the time of cold were gone through — house-walls and roofs put in order, skins of fur cut out and sinew-threads prepared to sew all with for garments, meat and fish smoked and stacked and stored, and wood piles grew — yet the usual satisfaction of doing usual tasks was absent. Hunting and fishing with bone and stone and horn did not yield the yield of iron, and iron continued ill. Now the common central-fire was no longer enough, each house must fire its hearth and for each hearth-fire tax must be paid. The days of felling trees with stone-hacks were not to return as yet, and as each house sought the windfallen wood, it was necessary to go farther and farther away for supply. Taxes had increased and were oppressive, and were brutally collected. There were said to be spies. There was certainly uncertainty and fear.
Now and then voices of loud good cheer rang out, and usually they broke off as faces turned with lowering looks to see who was so ill-tempered as to feel well. Mutters and whispers were common by far. But voices all fell silent when in sight of the low hut in which all knew a dead man lived; and a man so suddenly grown in repute as witcherer for having brought the dead one to life again; and one who was known to be that Son of the Bear who had been driven forth to die only that spring, and who not only had not died but had grown out of all reasonable expectation and past all natural rate of growth. These things were ill thought of, but even less to be thought of was to speak ill of them aloud — if at all. And so to these three, wood and winter peltry — clothes and food — were by stealth supplied, though not, of course, supplied by all, and, of course, never out of benevolence …
And day by day the dread sight was seen of Dead Roke, as he leaned upon the other two, walking up and down, for all the world as though he were alive: and day by day the strength of his gait and the span of his walk increased. Whey-face and his speckled clan were much given to ill looks and long faces over this, shrugs of incredulity and sighs of despair, groans of horror. Gestures threatening the witchery three. None gainsaid them, but, in truth, being generally believed to be among the king’s eyes and ears, they were much more feared and hated than they were supported.
One day as the three of ill-omen paced slowly back and for
th in the lane, a fourth person came into sight … stopped still as they walked away again … approached closer to where they had been … and so until, at last, they faced each other. Arnten knit his heavy brows, sore memories of boys beating one boy rolling in his mind. Then his memory focused and his face cleared. “Corm,” he said.
The day was cold, but Corm’s pallor was not from that, and indeed sweat was on his face. Crows congregated and clamored in a crook tree by the lane, and when they paused the three could hear his troubled breath. He said, “I am afraid. Oh, how I am afraid …”
Arnten with one hand took the boy’s hand. With his other hand he took Roke’s hand and placed it under his own. The boy’s hand trembled. Slowly, then, slowly, Arnten drew his own hand out. And so Corm’s hand came to rest upon Roke’s. After a long while the trembling ceased. Corm said, “Your hand is warm, and it is longer than mine, and it is the hand of a living man, and not of a dead one.”
• • •
Roke said, “The pain of my body was so great as it lay, broken and bleeding, that I felt I couldn’t stay in it, and my breath returned to the Dreaming World. Even when all the deads called out and cried out to me to return, I would not. Then I saw the bear, The Great Bear, The Dream Bear, with his stars all shining through him, and he came towards me as though he swam through water, although he did not move at all. Then he did move, and he reached forth his starry arm and touched my bosom with his starry hand, and he said to me in his great voice, ‘Return.’ So I did return, and I lay in my blood and others came and watched me but none helped me. Till at last came Bab, by whose kindness and whose witchery alone I truly returned to life.”
He withdrew his hand and opened his upper garment. “And as to what befell me in the Dreaming World, in the Land of the Breaths, in deads’ land, here is the sign.”
On his bosom, as though drawn in blood but perfectly dry, red as red against the whiteness of his skin, as long and as broad as a full man’s hand, was the likeness of a bear.
“Now,” said Roke — after Corm, with a hiss and a sigh, had looked at the mark and touched it and then looked at the other three in awe, and looked at them, having drawn himself up, in silent expectation — “Now let us go inside, where there is less cold, and fewer eyes, and fewer ears.” This they did, and Arnten told Corm of what he had experienced, he showed him the bear-token and the bearskin and the witchery-bundle and the great horn which is All-Caller: and Corm spoke of the increasing oppression of the people, of their sufferings from the sickness of iron, from the heavy exactions of the king, from their fear of his eyes and of his spies, of hunger, cold, witchery, and weird. And Corm knelt and touched the bear-things and was made one of them.
That night the Bear came to Arnten in a dream. The Bear was there, but said nothing, and Arnten saw many crows; he saw himself make a gesture and the crows flew off. All the crows but one flew off, and somehow Arnten killed the crow and cut off its head and cut out its tongue and buried the head. And when he awoke and when the others were awake he told his dream. And they talked of it, and they made their plans.
“Who knows how important this may be,” said Bab-witcherer, “in carrying out what must be done, once Roke is all healed and capable of doing all things once again.”
Arnten left the hut in midmorning, and Corm followed a good space behind. The leafless branches of the old crook tree were thick with crows, like so many black leaves. They cawed their cry to each other again and again, and the dull cold sky echoed with their harsh screams. Arnten made a dash towards the tree and flung out his hand, as though there were a stone in it. Instantly, and with great clamor, the flock took wing and wheeled away … all but one, which uttered what seemed a derisive cry to its fearful and departing fellows, now making tracks across the sky, then muttered some softer syllables to itself. And Corm placed a stone in a sling from where he stood, behind, and swung and cast and the crow fell dead from the tree.
With a grunt of satisfaction Arnten took up the dead bird and cut out its tongue with the knife from his father’s witchery-bundle. It being ill-luck to bring any part of a crow into a hut with the blood still in it, Arnten sharpened a stick and thrust it into a slit cut in the spike of flesh, and propped it so that it would dry in the heat and smoke of a small fire built outside the hut. “That was well-aimed,” he said to Corm, and added, “It was well-slung, too — ” He accompanied his words with a gesture, and knocked over the stick: the tongue was jarred loose. “This was not well-aimed,” he said, stooping to pick it and the stick up. They both laughed; somehow Arnten took hold of the tongue first: this being so, he held it to insert the stick once more, but the tiny sliver of flesh was hotter than he had thought, and burned his fingers. Again they both laughed, and he thrust the burned fingers into his mouth.
As he cooled them with his spittle he heard the voices of children, though unusually clear and delicate, and unlike the coarse tones which he associated with the voices of men-children. In another moment he heard one say, “The eggling of the Bear has cut out the corby’s tongue!” And another said, “Night-colored one who flies in day, you will tell no more lies!” and one said “Nor truths as bad as lies, carrion-diet!”
Arnten looked up, half-astonished. “Who is that?” he asked.
“I see no one,” said Corm.
Nor did Arnten, looking all around and fumbling with the stick: only two snowbirds. Even as he gazed at them, and all round the trodden snow of the lane, the birds took wing, and began to circle. And again he heard the beautifully clear children’s voices; one saying, “But the hatchling of the Bear has acted too late, for the crow hath already told the wolf,” and the other declaring, “Ill hath he done in telling so, though ill doth he ever do. When the wolf meets the Bear, beware!”
“Nay, Corm,” said Arnsten, half confused, half alarmed, “did you not just now hear children talking?”
Corm said, “I heard nothing but the chirping and chattering of those twain snowbirds — ”
“When the wolf meets the Bear, beware!”
“Just now! Just now! Heard you not a child saying, ‘When the wolf meets the Bear, beware’?”
“Often have I heard those words, and more often of late than ever, Arnten,” Corm said, looking pale again; “but — ‘just now?’ — again, just now, I heard nothing but the chattering and the chirping of that pair snowbirds.”
Now the skin-flap door of the hut was thrust aside, and the seamed face of Bab-uncle appeared. He asked what had happened, and was told, though the telling was confused — as were the tellers. Bab looked grave. “Where did you bury the crow-bird’s head, then?” he asked. Both boys looked at him in sudden guilt, shock. “You have not buried the head? But … you did cut the head off, as the dream directed? Not that either …” He made a gesture, and at once set off to the crook crow-tree, and they with him. He made a single gesture more, seeing the splattered drops of blood upon the snow, and nought else.
“The dream has been in part fulfilled,” he said. “Let that at least be an omen of good for us …”
• • •
Orfas crouched huddled in his peltries upon his litter-bed in the Room of Secret Counsel, his queen silent and watchful at his side, when a strangely faltering step was heard approaching. It could be no stranger, else had the mandrakes on guard all shrieked beshrew, but —
Mered-delfin staggered in, straightened, sank heavily to his accustomed place. “What doth ail thee, Mered-witch?” the queen asked, swift. And even the Orfas-King, for once forgetful of his iron and of himself, stretched forth a hand as if to offer aid, muttered, “Mered, Mered, what is this — ?”
The chief witcherer let drop the arm which, with its wide black sleeve, had shielded his face. His lord and lady again besought his words. He shook his head, he flapped his black-sleeved arm. Then he opened wide his mouth. But no words came out.
Only blood.
Chapter XI
Deeper drifted the snow, deeper the miseries of the people. Piece by piece the em
issaries of the king took iron, took amber, furs, took stores of food. Those who were slow to pay had their fires trampled out, or were made sodden with the piddle of the tax-collectors. Sometimes those suspected of withholding, concealing — sometimes rightly, sometimes not — had hands or feet thrust into the flames or embers; were left with only their burns for warmth. The four who dwelt in old Bab’s hut (Corm finding it, although scant and crowded, better than his family’s house, they liking not and cursing much his new-found friendships) heard the steps of the kingsmen going by, and though sometimes the pace of these steps did seem to alter somewhat, though the voices of the enforcers of tribute tended to drop at such times, still, at no time did any thrust a hand to draw aside the door-skin — to venture inside. The old man paid his hearth-fire tax, and the kingsmen took care (if not content) to let matters rest at that.
Within the hut, and amongst the four, the present paced slowly, hanging the future. It was agreed that they must leave, and in general they were in accord that their passage must be for the north. It was not the winter and its snows which deterred their going; if the land were thus made harder of passing, less was the chance of pursuit, or even desire of pursuit. But as they depended much upon the presence of Roke, his skill and strength and vigorous manhood, so they could not leave till both strength and vigor were restored to him. The medicine and witchery of the Bab-wizard had helped keep Roke’s breath within him when his bones were broke and his mind wandering, and this same wizardry and wisdom helped him as he mended. But Bab dared not force the pace, and none dared force the Bab.
As for Arnten, although the walls of the hut were not as close as those of the mine-cells, still, he took not much pleasure in them. The Bear is in the blood …
Ursus of Ultima Thule Page 11