Eër-derred-derred-eër looked long and looked close. “It says to me that once I did see it.” He paused and looked more and, as he inclined his head, seemed indeed to listen as well as look. “It says no more,” he concluded.
Arn sighed. Roke had thought of something. “Bab, why does thee not build a hut and make witchery over this sign, then?” And Arn made a pleased sound. But Bab slowly and emphatically shook his head.
“I do not know this sign,” he repeated. “If I draw it, I may give it power. If I knew it, then I would know, for a first thing, how to keep power over it while I worked with it; and, if I knew it, then I would be able to obtain power from it … perhaps. But to do witchery-work with a strange and unknown sign? No, Bear, and no, Roke: this is not done.”
Roke drew away from the map, and, indeed, he would never draw near whenever it was open, again. And so they went on. The trees now were larch and spruce and aspen — not, as he had first thought, birch. And this once more put him in mind of the undines, and he wondered again what would have happened if Bab, alarmed at his not having returned by late afternoon, had not taken the major measure of telling Corm to blow the great fey horn. Twice, now, had it — they — saved him. He thought about this as they crossed the low, rolling hills carpeted with spring flowers; and then his mind fell into a reverie and he was not really aware what he was thinking of at all. Perhaps, then, he, least of any was prepared for that incident which brought from the nain a grunt of surprise, from Bab an exclamation of astonishment, from Roke a cry of alarm, and from Corm a wail of sheer pain.
Corm had set his foot down on it; he had been going slow, perhaps even dawdling, for he did not casually bring his foot up to take another slow step but stood there — not even holding it in his hand — stood there awkwardly on one foot, the other merely suspended. And he pointed, his wail ending abruptly, subsiding into a hiss of anguish.
For where his foot had been was a small smoldering place in the grass. ‘Oh, it hints!” he exclaimed. And hopped on one foot a pace to sit down and nurse his burn. They gathered round, partly to console and think what comfort they might administer, partly to examine this oddity. Their shadows fell across the tiny spot, and in that darkness they saw a small red eye of fire. Roke was first to speak.
“Make water on it,” he said, “same as though ‘twere a cut, for a man’s own water has healing salts.” This was customary folk-wisdom, all nodded, finding comfort in the known in face of the unknown. Roke helped Corm to his good foot, and, the younger man, leaning against him for support, began to carry out the suggestion; Roke himself followed his own counsel, but aimed his urine on the burning place. It hissed as though itself in pain, it steamed. And Bab rummaged in his bag of medicines and came up with a small horn of some fat a long-ago winter’s night prepared with herbs. He murmured as he wiped Corm’s foot dry with a tuft of grass and with his finger he gently spread the salve upon the already-reddening place, and fastened a very soft strip of bark around the foot from instep to sole; and fastened it so, deftly.
“Tis odd, tis odd,” he murmured. “Tis very odd.”
And then, Corm placing his weight upon the foot with only a slight grimace and they starting off once more, Arnten, pointing, said, “And not that one ‘odd’ alone: look — ”
Ahead of them yet another wisp of smoke ascended.
They came up to it very cautiously, yet not so close as to the first one, yet it needed not that closeness, for it was somewhat larger. “It be a fire-ring,” the young nain said. And sure enough, it was not a mere spot or small full-circle, but a true ring, and in the midst of the burning was an unburned core of grass.
“The grass is not dry,” said Arnten.
“Well for us that it is not,” his old uncle declared. “Else all might burn, and us with it.” And they shuddered, remembering the great grass fires which sometimes swept the dry plains, driving men and beasts and birds before it in full terror and flight. Then, seeing Roke again fumbling at himself, “Nay, let us press on, thee cannot hope to piddle out every unsought smolder-fire we may meet — ”
They laughed, perhaps more than the wit of it deserved, and they walked on, walked on faster. Then before their eyes and even while they scanned the turfy grass, they saw the next circle spring up into fire before their gaze. One united sound of dismay they made. Corm, as though without thinking, made a twisting movement with his index finger and began a childhood chant familiar to them all … perhaps even to the nain. “Ringy-ringy-ringworm, firey-firey-fireworm, little-worm, big-worm, out-thee-GO — !”
At GO, he flung his finger out as though flicking something away. And they all solemnly spat three times, as though they were indeed children at solemn play trying to exorcize an itch.
“May it be to some avail, and soon,” Bab said. “But let us not wait here to see, for while we have waited, there has another sprung up — ” They started off at great pace, going off their straight-intended path to avoid this newer and, alas, greater circle of smoke and fire. And while they walked so quickly they, with one unspoken accord and one unrehearsed movement, looked back over their shoulders, as though to see if safety might be had by return.
Yet behind them as before them the gouts of fire on several sides were springing up, not less behind than before. They skirted this newest, nearest burning ring, and glanced away from it with some wordless noises of satisfaction, but pleasure was short-lived indeed: for whilst they were circling one circle, all round and round about them another one had been growing.
They broke into a run, they raced as never Arnten had remembered racing, not even when he had fled from the sudden mob in his home hamlet; and they did not pause, they leaped over the low-smouldering loop; and landed, half-stumbling, half-falling, on the yonder side. For a moment, at least, safety.
But fire-loop was now crossing and intersecting fire-loop, and though they kept on running, kept on jumping and kept on leaping, there was no more sign of reaching unburning land than there seemed to be of the medicine-chant’s having had any success. Arnten’s pack humped and bumped and flapped against his side, and he made a ducking gesture so as to pass the belt over his head and so let the pack drop and so be rid of it and so run on the faster and the better: in drawing the pack up past his face, or in drawing his face down past his pack, his nostrils were met with a wet and musty smell, almost a stink, a reek of something which was not fish, though for an instant he thought of that; nor yet snake, though for a second he was reminded of that. There was something very important, urgent, in that brief reek. His mind said: Rim! His feet said: On! His heart said: Woe!
But his nose said, Stop!
And he stopped, and surrounded as he was by heat and by reek and by smoke and by the smoking shadows of death, down he sat him. He heard say, moaning, “Arnten has fallen — ”
Roke: “Arnten? Back, then, back to him — ”
The nain came trotting and came shambling back, not fearing now to let himself be seen on all his four limbs, his long arms, knuckles to ground, aiding him as though legs; the nain made his way with surprising swiftness, and he took hold and Arnten flung his arm off — “Eh, a-be’s daft, ‘s brains do turn from fear and fire!” the nain bellowed, and made as though to catch him up and carry him off. Arnten, burrowing in his pack, delving and tugging, brought up his sweat-streaked face, forced himself to speak.
“I am not — ” he panted. He thrust up a hand to avoid Roke’s lunging arm.
“My mind is well — ” he ducked to escape his uncle’s withered paw.
“Don’t leave me — wait, wait — for you — for you as well for me — here — here — here — and here — ”
At full long last he had it from his pack, he had the packet, he had it unfastened, he spread it out, unfolding it. He gestured, he tried to explain, his voice breaking. Half they would seize and drag him, half they strove to get his meaning. Half they would have fled and saved themselves, half they were full loathe to do so. And it was, as might have been expected, Bab
, who first comprehended.
Who stooped, snatched up, sat himself down. Who cried, doing so, “That sign … that witchery sign … Nay, bind your feet, all! Bind your feet! Wrap these strips of skin round about your feet! These be the cutting from that beast back there, from that dragon-beast, from that salamander …”
And they sat themselves down, though death was burning brightly all round about them. And they gravely wrapped around their feet the wet and cold skin of the salamander, the dragon, the dead dragon, finding their life in his death. And they arose, and with one’s hand on the other’s shoulder, coughing and stumbling in the smoke, they strode yet safely across the burning rings. And nothing of them did burn.
Chapter XV
Wizardland looked fey indeed.
It seemed as though many great rivers, or one great river which had shifted its channel repeatedly, had coursed through the land over endless ages. Eroded cliffs, gaunt escarpments, high and low plateaus and buttes were the up-and-down features of the terrain. Grey gravel crunched under their feet, and then there was grey sand and then smooth grey pebbles, which were hard for feet to find a purchase on, rolling and sliding. This gave way to wide beds of coarse red sand and beyond that the red sand was finer and then their trudging, stumbling feet sent up clouds of red dust which bit into nostrils and throat. The way led between huge black boulders beneath beetling black cliffs and nut-sized black pebbles graded slowly into seed-sized grains of black sand which hissed beneath their feet. After a while there were streaks of gold in the blackness, and then streaks of blackness in the floor of golden sands. Black and white and gold and black and red, over and over again.
But of the river or rivers which had, ages after ages, rolled and roared and ground and eaten into the tortured surface of the land, eaten their way deeper and deeper, eaten the rock into gravel and the gravel into sand, washing away every trace of soil, leaving not even a pocket of true earth — of these mighty and age-long waters, not a drop remained. The courses of Wizardland were dry, long dry.
The courses of Wizardland were dry.
Witchery-Bab crooned a soft song, chanting in the Old Tongue. In each hand he held a branch of rowan with the red berries dried on them. The others had spread out from him without speaking, almost without thinking of it.
When the old man paused, as he did now and then, they all did the same. Now, to the right, an enormous black spire of rock retreated upward at a shallow slant. Vast and irregular red-and-black streaked blocks lay to the left as though tumbled and left there by giants at play. A slight wind rustled the rowan twigs in the old man’s hands and the berries rattled. But there was no wind felt upon them, however slight. Only a chill, a crawling of the skin, a puckering of flesh around erect hairs, as they saw the rowans tremble and move in the old man’s hands, and slowly and slowly shift.
And the old man shifted with them till they ceased to shift further, only they trembled and the dried berries rattled on the dried twigs. And the old man moved on, and they moved on with him.
A canyon of grey rocks all humble-tumble and eaten into a wilderness of holes prepared them gradually for the great inward-slanting cleft in the rock which they saw before them at the time of no shadows, at the canyon’s end. A blind wall of high grey stone faced them, blind, that is, save for the single slant eye of the cavern. And they slumped, all, and stopped, all, and all of them sighed what seemed to be one same and drawn-out sigh.
Now for the first time since they had entered this fey region of rock and sand and cliff and stone, the old man seemed to be slightly uncertain as to what move he must make next, and he stood hesitant, his mouth moving but his song silent, and the rowan twigs still rustling in his hands. In his old uncle’s eyes as they now turned towards him, Arnten read the wish for help. He took two strides and took the rowans and set them flat upon the smooth grey sands of the canyon floor, straightly pointing to the cavern mouth. There was a slight sound in his throat as the medicine-twigs slithered forward the space of the breadth of a few fingers, as though drawn by hands unseen. Then they stopped. A dry susurration as of insects’ wings seemed to sound all round them in the dry, flat air: but if it was still an actual sound or the memory of one, the faces which they wore implied nought but doubt.
Next Arnten merely dropped his burden, and this heavy and simple sound, accompanied by the relieved grunt of a man simply glad to be lighter of a weight, changed the mood. For all of them bore burdens, and they all now hasted to let them slide as they stooped and turned. The old one groped and fumbled his fire-kit, made no objection when Roke, with a murmur, squatted beside him and took up the sticks and the dried fungus and plied his hands rapidly to work. Now Arn and nain-Eër set to work to cut the thigh-bone of the deer from the hip-socket and the flesh of the haunch from the bone, stone knife and iron knife and force and thrust and snap and slash. The liver and a slab of the kidney fat lay neatly wrapped together in a deer pouch.
Fire spurted soon from the pinches of dried fungus fed into the socket of the lower fire-stick, moved to a handful of rush grass, was fed to a cone of thin sticks, ate the heavier firewood they had brought upon their backs to this land devoid of twig or grass or tree … died down into coals. The marrow bone was laid in first to roast, and then the liver and the fat, which fed the fire its own unctuous fuel without the need of more wood. The spittle filled their dried mouths, but none dared as yet even lick a finger.
And still and always the echo of a dry rustling seemed to sound in every ear.
Arnten presently cracked open the steaming marrow-bone and he poked out the soft marrow-core and let it fall upon the clean piece of bark which did for dish. And next to it he set a slice of the crisped fat, and beside that he placed a slice of the liver, bubbling richly in its blood.
“Salt,” he said.
They gave him the bone bottle of sea-salt and he opened the carved stopple and sprinkled the offering with the clean white crystals, six times strained through fine filters. Then he rose to his feet and the bark platter was carefully handed up to him and he and the old man walked with deliberate pace forward, and the others sat where they were, and trembled. And the two walked into the cave and then their feet were heard and then their feet were not.
• • •
The adjustment from light to shadow was gradual, and in the half-light they saw something protruding from the wall of the inner cave which might have been a mummy-bundle, all grey and dusty and clad in wrappings: but mummy-bundles do neither tremble, howsoever faintly, nor do they twitch and rustle. Recognitions came in quick flashes. Two bundles of twigs: hands. Faint gleams as of dew-light on dirty stones: eyes. Ceremonial mask long hung away forgotten, to moulder and gather dust: face. The faint drone, faint rustlings, the faint movements were reminiscent of nothing so much as of the tired and desperate and hopeless motion and sound of an insect somehow still faintly alive in winter.
Arnten first dipped his finger in the bubble-blood and poked it into the dry, dry cavern of the mouth, felt it touch the dry and dusty, faintly trembling tongue. The travesty of a mouth with the least conceivable pressure sucked the seethed blood from the fingertip as though a newborn and dying babe were sucking milk from a teat. Next he smeared the fat of the offering upon the dry, seared lips, the sear cracked lips; and watched them slowly close upon each other, heard the almost inaudible smack of those dead and dusty lips. He wafted the odorous steam of the meal under those dust-choked nose holes. He saw the grey-smeared eyelids quiver, the faint gleam widen.
So, slowly, slowly, slowly, he fed the wizard.
The first thing the wizard said, after a long time: “Now, my sibs there …” Even farther into the shadow and the gloom were two other huddled bundles which buzzed and rustled like two dying flies; Arnten perceived how close alike is life’s revival to its conclusion.
So, slowly, slowly, slowly, he fed the wizards.
• • •
They ate the liver, every morsel. They sopped up the marrow, every soft crumble of it. T
hey licked up every congealing drop of fat. By this time it was so far declined from noon, when he had entered, that he could barely make out their nodding heads and wavering hands as they dismissed him. “It was well done,” he was told, in creaking, faltering tones. “And now we would rest a moment, till the daylight come again.”
The empty piece of bark, which Arnten burned upon the barely-living fire, answered the question his companions did not ask. He and his old uncle and counsellor sank down and sighed heavy signs and watched the greasy bark, once clean, blaze brightly in the dying embers. They blinked. After a while Arnten asked, “Have you eaten?”
There was a somewhat incredulous silence. And Corm asked, “Have you?”
“We? We were feeding wizards …” Now it was the turn of Corm, Roke, and Eër-derred-derred-eër to sigh.
“Feeding wizards,” the young nain repeated. He paused. The great part of their journey had been accomplished; for — it seemed to him now — all his life he had been hearing his elders and even his age-peers muttering, “The wizards must be fed”; that, were they but fed, the curse would vanish from iron, the king and the kingsmen would cease to molest, that the forges of Nainland once again would grow hot and their smokes attaint the air: once again all would be as before; hence, all would be well. But now Nainland seemed infinitely far away, and its concerns infinitely remote. In this arid and barren land only one thing now seemed real to him — his hunger. And although his tongue still retained some natural diffidence, his body did not.
The young nain’s enormous and unpremeditated eructation echoed in the all but complete darkness and rolled from canyon wall to wall. For a moment Corm and Roke waited, aghast, for some ghostly wizard, or some wizardly ghost, to avenge the insult. But the echoes died away, and all, for the moment, was silent — but only for a moment. Next Corm’s belly gave a series of warning rumbles, and then from his mouth, too, for a second, blowing aside the wispy moustaches and beard which now proudly obscured it, broke the same impatient sound which had from the nain’s. And next and at once, as though rehearsed, and well-rehearsed, a by far deeper series of growls caused Roke’s taut belly to writhe, and he uttered by far the loudest brunk of the three.
Ursus of Ultima Thule Page 15