by MD. Lachlan
‘The god needed a death. The valley wanted a death. She showed me the triple knot.’ The Raven’s hands made a lazy pattern in the air. ‘Three in one, the dead lord’s necklace that slips until it sticks and then slips no more. I went to the abbot in his cell. He had drunk a bellyful and it was easy to do what the god asked.’
Jehan’s throat was dry. The eyes of the child seemed to bore into him. He felt he desperately needed water, desperately needed to eat. He licked his lips. The taste of the stuff he had found beneath the snow was on them, but it did not fulfil him, only fired his will to seek more.
‘By the morning my sister was well. The wild woman said that the price of my sister’s life was her service. I followed them into the hills.’
The whole church seemed to Jehan to rock.
‘Do you say the idol you seek to appease wants death now?’
‘I have given him that. I don’t know what he wants.’
Jehan could think no more about the Raven’s words. The blood inside him was turning the veins and cavities of his body to sea caves, smashed by surf. He could only think of one thing.
‘What is that?’ said Jehan. He struggled to get the words out.
‘What is what?’
‘You have something on you. Something wet.’ Jehan could scent it. He longed to lap it, to suck at the cloth of the Raven’s cloak, to drink in the smell and the taste of the black ichor that covered the Raven’s head, his shoulder and his hands.
‘The same as you, monk. It is tough work that I do.’
‘What is it?’
The Raven smiled. His face, thought Jehan, was familiar. It was a symptom of the sickness that had come upon him since he had come to the monastery, he was sure. He had seen the Raven’s face somewhere before. It was torn, swollen, pockmarked and disfigured, but he knew it.
‘What is it?’
‘It is blood.’ The child dropped back and the shadows covered her. She was a face retreating into a mire of darkness. Then she was gone.
Blood. Jehan fell forward onto the flagstones. He had known what the smell was but he had blocked it from his mind. Blood, as he had tasted in the clearing, blood, as he had lapped it from the snow. The church seemed to spin about him. He felt his throat constricting and his skin clammy, sweaty and cold. His body seemed to bubble with the need for action.
Prayers and snatches of songs, articles of the Church, seemed to split apart and run through his mind, looking to coalesce into something intelligible, looking to bring him back to who he was. One who vomits the host because his stomach is overloaded with food, if he casts it into the fire, shall do penance twenty days … God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made … If those little beasts are found in the flour whatever is around their bodies shall be cast out … We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come … He would not defile himself with the king’s food, nor with the wine which he drank … If a dog should eat it, a hundred days …
The rage inside him felt as though it would split his skin. His throat was burning now with a thirst that demanded immediate satisfaction.
‘You are ill, traveller,’ said the Raven. He looked around him. ‘This is your god’s house but he is not here for you. My fellow, yes, my fellow, he waits in the dark where he has always waited. Here, quench your thirst.’
He passed the confessor a cup. The water in it smelled familiar, though Jehan’s thoughts were too disordered to recognise it. He swallowed it down.
His thirst was not quenched. He wanted only one thing. Blood. He looked at the Raven and knew what he needed to do. He stood. He had the sword in his hand. The Raven stood. Jehan tried to lift his hand to strike but the sword wouldn’t move. His arm would not obey his command.
‘This place wants death,’ said the Raven, ‘and it seems it wants yours.’ He pushed Jehan in the middle of the chest and the monk fell back. Jehan was lying on the floor, the smell of blood filling his mind. He was coughing. He put his hand to his mouth. A black ooze was at his lips. The cup had been poisoned. He had known the taste if only his mind had been functioning well enough to recognise it. And yet the feeling had begun long before he’d drunk the poison.
‘You have killed me.’
‘Not yet,’ said the Raven, ‘not yet.’
Jehan looked up at the scarred mess of the sorcerer’s face and finally recognised it. He had not looked in a mirror since he was seven years old, but there in front of him, thinner, eaten and torn by ritual and privation, scarred and misshapen, was his own face looking back at him.
Jehan collapsed and the Raven took him by the arms and dragged him to the crypt.
38 The Wolfstone
Prince Helgi the Prophet lay sweating in his bed. The khagan had a problem. He needed to be a bulwark for his people, a rock on which they could depend, so by day he presented a front, was bluff and cheerful, indulged in the drinking games and allowed his warriors to let him win the contests of strength and speed. But at night, in sleep, he had no such control over himself. He cried out in the dark, and his cries were cries of panic. The Norsemen were not a private people: they slept in their longhouses side by side, children, men and women all packed in together. Soon his night terrors were the stuff of marketplace gossip; they undermined him in his dealings with his druzhina, and he heard it whispered that Ingvar’s party were using them to foment trouble against him.
It was as if his fear of the god’s prophecy – that Ingvar would rule – was itself making that prophecy come true.
The rabble of soothsayers and magicians was still around him, living off his coin, but Helgi put no faith in any of them. He went again to the temple of Svarog, into its dark lodge, breathed in the burning herbs, endured the darkness and the waiting, but nothing came, just visions of Sváva, watching him, always watching him. He needed more.
He found himself unreasonably irritated with the normal night-time sounds of his hall – a child crying, a mother soothing it, a couple kissing and caressing, an old man snoring and farting – and went outside to look up at the deep stars. He would conquer everything under them, he thought, if only that awful prophecy didn’t hang over his head like an enemy’s axe.
‘You need to take the girl from Paris.’
A voice. Helgi looked around him. There was no one, just the shadows under the lee of the hall roof.
‘Who is this?’
‘A friend.’
It was as if the shadows unwrapped, and the wolfman stepped forward, tall, dark, his face drawn but his limbs strong, the great wolf’s pelt about him, its jaws over his head as if devouring it.
‘I can bring her here. I can convince her. My destiny is entwined with hers. It has been revealed to me.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Sindre, called Myrkyrulf.’
‘You are a sorcerer?’
‘Of a sort.’
‘How much are you looking for?’
‘I don’t want silver; I need something greater than treasures from you.’
‘What?’
‘Your promise. The one-eyed god is coming to earth and we must prevent it.’
Helgi swallowed. The man seemed to know about Loki’s prophecy, but the god had revealed it no one, and no magician had even come close to guessing it so far.
‘What promise?’
‘You must keep her safe. You must find a place of safety for her.’
‘That is my wish, but I cannot get to her.’
‘I can.’
‘So why do you need me?’
‘Because it is my destiny to die at the hands of my brother. I can bring the girl here, I am sure, but her ongoing protection must be someone else’s responsibility.’
‘Who is your brother?’
‘The sorcerer called the Raven. This has been revealed to me.’
‘By who?’
‘By my mother.’
‘Who is your mother?’
‘A slave from the north. Her name is Saitada and sh
e is a wide-seeing woman and an enemy of the hanged god.’
‘What do you know of the one-eyed god. Of Odin?’
‘I am his enemy.’
‘Is he coming to earth?’
‘We can prevent him.’
‘How?’
The wolfman touched his own neck. A pebble hung there, a common grey stone with the crude etching of a wolf’s head upon it.
‘This is a gift of Loki, the enemy of the gods. It stops magic, silences runes. To come here she will need her magic to defend herself. Once she is here, she must wear this, the Wolfstone. The wolf will not find her while she wears it. You will be able to get her to a place of safety.’
‘Why will she not go to a place of safety without it? Does she seek death?’
‘She doesn’t, but the runes do. And she is pursued. There is another woman who carries the runes. She seeks the lady’s death and is very capable of causing it. She and her brother – Hugin and Munin, strong sorcerers as I know to my cost – are servants of Odin.’
‘I have heard of them.’
‘I have fought them, but I cannot risk too much. It is my brother’s destiny to kill me. This stone has been my protection.’
‘Keep your stone. I have had enough of charms,’ said Helgi.
‘My mother is skilled in Seid magic and used this stone for many years to protect herself from witches. Put this on her, and you and she will be safe from the runes. The god cannot come together on earth. Ask yourself why I should lie about this when I have spoken so much truth about everything else.’
Helgi looked at the man and believed him. He knew so much; he wanted no reward; he had come unseen past the town’s guards. All this was reason to accept what he said, but there was more: Helgi wanted the wolfman to be speaking the truth, so he decided that he was. ‘The destiny will be prevented?’ Helgi thought of Ingvar marching at the head of his army.
‘This is my hope.’
‘What do you need to get to Paris?’
‘Only a guide,’ said the wolfman.
‘I will give you my strongest men.’
‘Let me travel quietly,’ said the wolfman. ‘To conquer Paris and take the girl you would need ten thousand warriors. Better to send none at all than too few. We are to take the girl by stealth. I need only a guide, a little man who can go to an inn and buy food for me without sparking comment.’
It was then that Helgi had thought of the merchant who had come to him petitioning for a loan to help buy a cargo that he was certain could earn the prince ten times his outlay. Helgi had sent him from his hall. The man had been unlucky in business and the khagan thought it might be catching. But Leshii the silk man would do, he thought, for men came scarcely any littler than he.
Helgi had a question before granting the wolfman even a dog to guide him: ‘If you are certain of death, then why do you try to save the girl? You will not be here for her.’
‘Because I have died for her before. It is my destiny to do so. It is the nature of my bond to her. And if the god fails to come to earth, perhaps his spell will be broken and when we live again …’ he seemed briefly lost for words ‘… we can live unremarkable lives.’
‘It is a blessing to be a hero,’ said Helgi.
‘I have not found it so,’ said the wolfman.
Helgi held out his hand. ‘The stone. I will need it if it is as you say, and the magic inside this girl can work independently of her will.’
‘No,’ said the wolfman. ‘I will need it to fight the forces that are against me.’
‘So how will it come to me?’
‘We have a powerful god working for us in Loki. This is his gift. If he wants you to have it, as I believe he will, then the stone will make its way to you.’
Helgi did not know what to believe but he was certain of one thing. The wolfman seemed confident he could recover the lady from Paris, and the prince would only have to risk the life of one failing merchant to let him try.
39 Song Everlasting
Water and darkness. Cold and noise. A voice singing. Singing? Jehan could see nothing. He was pinioned to something, tied with his hands behind his back, up to his chest in cold water. Someone next to him was singing. Plainsong. The words seemed curiously muted, a tight little echo that spoke of a low roof.
‘You will not fear the terror of the night,
Nor the arrow that flies by day,
Nor the plague that prowls in the darkness,
Nor the scourge that lays waste at noon.’
The voice was tremulous, the notes uneven, but Jehan could tell it had been trained in the monkish practice. The song was a psalm. He felt so strange he couldn’t tell if he was dreaming or awake.
‘Who is here?’ said Jehan.
The sensation of hunger was no duller in him. He spat. The taste in his mouth was vile. Poison. Yes, he had been poisoned. He recalled the Vikings in the warming house. The poison on their lips had not killed them – they had been asphyxiated by the smoke. The thought came and went like a footprint in the sand, washed away by the cold tide of hunger.
One voice stopped singing and said, ‘Brothers Paul and Simon. Who are you?’
‘Brother Jehan, of Saint-Germain.’ It was as if he was shouting his name over a high wind. He felt tormented, almost unable to think.
‘The confessor of Paris?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you come to save us?’
‘I cannot save you.’
The song of the man on his right continued:
‘A thousand may fall at your side,
Ten thousand fall at your right,
You, it will never approach,
His faithfulness is buckler and shield.’
‘Are you strong enough to sing, brother? We must keep the song going. This abomination has befallen us because we allowed it to stop.’
Jehan couldn’t reply. He moved his leg. Something bobbed against it.
‘We are to die,’ said the monk. ‘Thank God for the gift of our martyrdom.’ His words were brave but his voice was quaking. Jehan could tell the man was cold. Jehan was cold too, very cold.
‘Where are we?’
‘In the lower cave, at Christ’s well.’
The song went on:
‘See how the wicked are repaid,
You who have said, “Lord, my refuge!”’
‘Where is that?’
‘There is a tunnel from the crypt. It drops to here, a holy well beneath the earth. The Norsemen slaughtered us without pity. It is polluted now.’
Something else bobbed against the confessor’s arm. Something else too, tickling his hands. Weed? No, there was a solid form behind it. Jehan grasped it and felt around with his fingers. He ran them across something hard and smooth, a semicircle of ridges and bumps. Then he let go. What he had in his hand was hair, he realised, and they were teeth he felt with his fingers.
‘Can you move?’ said Jehan.
‘No. Are you not tied?’
‘I am tied.’
‘Then it is useless. He will be waiting for us. He means us to die here.’
Jehan swallowed. He was trembling too. The song to his right faltered.
He strained forward and coughed. Something was at his neck. A noose. He tried to work it free by twisting his head but that only made things worse. It was tight now, not crushing his windpipe, not even cutting off his blood, but he knew that any more struggling could kill him.
And then he saw it – a light coming towards him. It was a candle. Surely some of the monks had survived; surely some of the Vikings would become sick of waiting and break in. He saw where he was – a pool in a natural cavern, its ceiling an arm’s reach above his head. Three big pillars of limestone sank from the roof into the water, and it was to these that the men had been bound. To his right was the singing monk, spluttering out the words of the psalm. To his left another, fatter monk. Both men were chattering and shaking with the cold.
All around them, the bodies floated or hung in the water,
pale as dead fish in a pond, their human juices, blood, shit and piss, voided from the body by death, turning the pool to a stinking soup. The monks had been murdered, no doubt – some by the sword, some by the nooses tied with three close-fitting knots.
The Raven put down the candle by the edge of the pool. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘This terror is … required.’
‘Unclean thing,’ said Jehan, ‘abomination, sorcerer—’ The rope dug into his neck, choking him. ‘I am not afraid of you.’
The Raven smiled at him but there was no humour in his eyes.
‘It is not your terror the god wants. He looks for mine. These …’ he searched for a word but could not find one, so he used the confessor’s ‘… these abominations are not my inclination. Do not mistake me for the Roman who gloried in torture.’
Jehan tried to speak but could only cough.
The Raven continued: ‘We will both have what we want, monk. I will have my vision and you will be a martyr. When they find you they’ll make some rare art to commemorate this death. The pilgrims will wear medallions for you, no doubt.’
‘I—’
Jehan couldn’t speak.
The Raven sat down at the water’s edge. He rocked backwards and forwards intoning a chant quite different to the plainsong of the monks. This was low, guttural, and its metre pattered and stuttered, raced and paused in a dizzying tumble of Norse words.
‘Fenrisulfr,
Pinioned and bound,
Wolf, ravenous and tortured,
Great eater,
Godbane and blight,
I will suffer as you suffer.
For my agony
Insight,
For my terror
A vision …
The chant went on and on, the plainsong rising above it. The monk to his right failed and the other took up the recitation. The psalms had been sung every day in that place for hundreds of years. For what? thought Jehan. To keep this horror at bay. Had this abomination lain unfed for so long because the monks had kept to their vigil?