CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH
Helg's little house was much as Kveldulf remembered it. The thatch still smelled of warm, damp straw, the many bottles and jars that lined the shelves still exuded every imaginable perfume and tang and reek. There were dried animal skins hanging from the rafters, and several cutlets of mutton and pork smoking over the fireplace.
As soon as they got Sigurd laid out into a small cot of straw, Helg began looking him over, checking his injuries, acting the herb-nurse.
As she worked she spoke in a low, friendly murmur. "Best get those wet rags off. Here's a nice warm blanket. Fancy a bit of tea? Now where does it hurt?" After wrapping his gashed chest with a thick gauze bandage that was wet with something pungent, she took the now drained mug from his white hands. "Feeling a bit warmer?"
He nodded.
"Good, good. You've lost a lot of blood, but by the time the birds are singing tomorrow morning you will be as right as rain, or nearly so. For now, the best thing for you to do is sleep."
"Yes," said Sigurd, with a sudden weariness. "Sleep." He lay his head on a pillow stitched together out of pieces of felt, and was soon snoring.
"Bless him, sleeps like a babe."
With his dripping cloak left by the door Kveldulf now warmed himself at the fire. "I suppose he must have a good conscience." He looked at Sigurd with a cool detachment. "What did you put in his tea?"
"A bit of this. A tad of that. Just to help him sleep. So as we can have a good private chat. We need to, I think."
Kveldulf stood, stretched his shoulders, and walked over to a stool beside the rough and time-stained table. A copper pot of steaming tea sat on the bench and two leather mugs.
"No, don't worry," said Helg, as Kveldulf eyed the steam. "I haven't sprinkled any sleepworts in your brew. Fill your mug, warm yourself. Let's talk."
Kveldulf took the mug and sat down. He stared at the rising steam and took a deep breath. "I am troubled. Troubling thoughts have entered my mind."
"Being chased though the night by an eerie creature will so that, or so I imagine."
"No. Or, yes, but that's not the trouble." Kveldulf looked about the room. It seemed empty but for himself, Helg and the slumbering Sigurd.
Helg watched with intense interest. "Do tell?"
"What did you see that night, Helg? When I spoke to you from the shadows. What did you see there?"
Helg was silent. She took a sip of her tea and at length replied, "I think you know."
"I recall a story from my youth. A lad named Edgierr was always in a rush and always clumsy. One day he wanders into the hearth-room where his father is entertaining guests. Not unusually, he trips over nothing and one of the guests bursts into laughter. Now, no one wants to say anything because although it is impolite to laugh at someone stumbling the guest was a seer. A soothsayer. When Edgierr can't bear the laughter any more he says, "Why do you mock my poor clumsiness?" But the seer rubbed a tear from his eye and said, "I am not laughing at you, I am laughing at what everyone else cannot see. You were in such a hurry to come into the room that you tripped over your own fylgiar. You should see what you look like stumbling into a goat."
With a thrumming in the back of her throat Helg laid down the mug of tea. "The follower. The double walker. It is said by some that a few 'lucky' folks are followed through life by an attendant spirit. Invisible but helpful."
"And in the shape of a beast," said Kveldulf. "And there are those who know magic to make their fylgiar solid and real. Shamans who can conjure up a fearsome beast to slaughter foemen. Bear shamans. Eagle shamans."
Helg looked at the table and stretched her old, thin fingers out on the wood. "And wolf shamans too, so I have heard."
"Have I been deluded all this time? Did the she-wolf go off on some other path, long ago? Or did I already kill the she-wolf, and taken her curse from her, like a cloak about the shoulders? Is there no worker of slaughter but me in my own fevered dreams?" Kveldulf rose unsteadily to his feet. He looked at Helg. "Who is the wolf that follows me? Is it me?" As he began to pace his voice strained. "Did I kill my own wife and children? Dear Ladys of Bright and Dark," said Kveldulf, "but there have been attacks when I was not spirit-walking. I'm sure of it." He hung his head and held his forehead against his palms.
"That faer glamour that was chasing you just now, you did not look very closely at it, did you?"
"It was swift upon us and we had little time. I saw it as a black shape. I smelled lavender. Alraun must have made it into a seeming to trick me."
"Kveldulf, Kveldulf, Kveldulf. You did not want to look at it. Believe me. I know more than a little about self-deception. If you do not want to look at it, then why?"
Kveldulf found himself unsure of the answer.
Helg snorted. "Now, I looked, really properly looked at that creature in the shadows before you plunged your little iron knife into it. Know what I saw?"
He answered stiffly. "A wolf. Alraun's illusion."
"No. I saw a great shaggy, shambling monster. But, at its heart nothing more than one of Alraun's concoctions of magic, swollen to terrible size by his anger, and glamour, and fear. If you had only looked at closely you would have seen through all the layers of illusion and magic with ease. You might have reduced it to whatever Alraun made it out of before it was even upon you. Truth can have a great deal of power over englamoured things."
"But I wasn't willing to look at it closely," he said. "I was afraid that it might not be the other wolf. I was afraid of seeing the truth. I wanted it to be her. It would mean I was not mad. I was not the murderer... if she were really here."
Helg shrugged and let her brow draw into a dark knot. "Perhaps... and yet..."
"And yet?"
"You may not be mad, Kveldulf. There is another presence in the forest. A shadow that has passed into the Veld. It is old and elusive, but I have sensed it."
"Demons of air and darkness will wander. It could be any old wayward wild spirit or wandering shadow."
"Or it might be your she-wolf. I cannot say. Whatever it is, it goes too quietly among the shadows for my scrying eyes to see. It is clever and subtle."
"Helg, tell me truthfully, without evasion, what did you see that night you spoke to me?"
"Bah. I'll do better than that. I'll tell you what I can see this very moment. Do you know what I see when I look at you with my one sharp eye?" She blew one long, cool breath across her piping tea and then gingerly took a sip of it. "I see this: I see a bedraggled man who looks as if he has walked the line between life and death too long. But, I see something else too. Behind him, right there," and she pointed one swollen knuckled finger, "I see a monstrously large, black wolf. He is scratching his left ear with a paw as we speak. His tongue is lolling out."
He looked over his shoulder. The room was empty but for shelves and sacks and dust.
"I bet you frighten dogs and cats. Bah, I say. They are not frightened of you." She pointed. "They are frightened of him. Now he is sniffing about the room."
"How can I have lived this long and not see the truth of this? Not understood?"
"Oh, don't give yourself so little credit. Of course you understood. You understood long ago. You've simply not wanted to accept it. The power to believe a reassuring lie is a powerful thing. And who would want to believe in an invisible tag-along wolf the size of a bear? Who could see the reflection of that thing, and not deny the truth of it. Who could see it, and not pretend that it isn't quite what it appears to be? Oh no, that can't be my other-soul. It must be some other demon-thing." Helg began to nonchalantly stuff her pipe. "You have known all along, Kveldulf. Deep down in your gut, I think you have always known that when you go dream-walking, you do so in the shape of a wolf. So, what if you did choose to push it all into the back of your skull, and pretend, and hope? You know what, deary? That doesn't sound mad. That sounds human." She jabbed the pipe at him, "but enough is enough. Now, you must learn to master yourself," and then pointing at nothing, "and him."
Kveldulf fe
lt his blood seethe with a chillness, he sank slowly to the floor and for the first time in two hundred years his eyes began to wet with tears. "She said she would be revenged on me. Well, she has had that, and more."
"Her revenge on you will only last so long as you do not master yourself. Learn to control the beast within and the beast without, Kveldulf, and you will throw off her vengeance."
Rising on unsteady feet he trembled for a moment, emotions chasing thoughts after memories through his mind. "I am a fool," he said. "I have lived in the belief that I was the only living person who might yet end the bloodshed of the she-wolf. Now, this? After so many years? After so many lives? Now, I am not even sure that she really was following me at all?" His voice shook with rage. But as he spoke, there an eerie howl arose outside the cottage, some short distance away. Kveldulf stopped short, stared at the door, and said, "Alraun's glamoured beast?"
"Presumably," said Helg. "You didn't kill it, I think. Just hurt it a bit. Broke it apart, so to speak. The creatures that were concealed in the pelt may well have regathered themselves. You left the skin outside, didn't you?"
"Yes." He waited for a minute, and listened as strange noises grew stronger, as the weird voice bayed and snarled in the woods, somewhere not very far away. "I have to see it. This faer thing, to be certain in my own heart. I need to look at it, and see what it really is, and see how badly I was deluded." He took to a brisk pace, and, flinging the door open with a loud thud, he walked into the night with a stricken purpose in his strides.
The door swung on the hinges a few gentle creaks before Helg got to her feet, shuffled over and shut it. "Well, I s'pose I should keep the tea hot for when you come back, all wet and miserable then."
-oOo-
The night was a myriad tangle of woven shapes and darkness. Lurid, ghastly trees clawed at his face and clothes. He had not paused to pick up his cloak from its hook on the wall, and soon, he was streaked with wet earthy stains.
At the place where he had left the wolf pelt on the ground, it was gone. The faer creatures had returned and stolen the skin back into the woods. He stood, listened, then turned, and picked a new direction, towards the strange predatory noises in the dark.
Striding into an open clearing at the river's edge, he saw it. Lurking on the far bank. It was much as Helg had said. Not a wolf at all. Yes, there was something wolfish in it. But also something of the bear, and fox, and perhaps even the stoat and hawk. Lurching its great head up its eyes flashed beautiful gold-flecked red. From jaws that issued a long, snarl there dripped poisonous looking saliva mingled with darker blood.
It cleared the stream in one powerful leap as Kveldulf let himself sink to his knees. He did not close his eyes to pray because he did not want to pray to civilised gods or goddesses anymore. He sought in his heart the old, half-forgotten patrons of his father. Those dark, doomed gods. He wished above all else to be taken away to the past, where all things seemed in his memory to be simple, and happy.
As he knelt, a wet drop cleared a furrow on his dirt-rubbed face, and the monstrous creature advanced, one careful paw after another. It lowered its head and its breath made a snickering, expectant sound. He took his iron dagger in hand, intending to kill the creatures that made up the illusion rather more permanently this time. There were only a few more paces for those long loping strides to cover when the creature stopped, and then sprang back. Suddenly, the fearsome creature enacted a comical mime. It bit, and leapt, tore and slashed with those curved talons. But what it fought, only it could see. Great gashes opened on the creature's flanks, and blood, shimmering like moonlight, spattered the air and earth. With wide, unbelieving eyes, Kveldulf stared as Alraun's pet force of nature was lifted clean off the ground, and held there, like a prop in some cheap conjurer's trick. Magical, living blood fell in a rain, and it howled and shrieked and writhed in pain. It had taken too much punishment it seemed, and disintegrated into the same five smaller creatures from before, as well as the flapping and empty pelt. But now, when the creatures tried to run or creep away, they did not escape. One after another, the small faer creatures were quickly and cleanly dispatched, each of them torn apart by something huge and invisible.
Kveldulf stood up, one trembling leg at a time, and forced himself closer to the carcasses that were now scatted in the leaves. Their skulls were crushed, their ribs torn open, and blood, rich and pale, matted the ferns and fur they had instead of hair.
"Dear gods," said Kveldulf.
A strange gleaming flicker sprang up all over the corpses and Kveldulf shielded his eyes from the glare. With a blaze, and a whisper, and a plaintive suffocated sound like chiming bells, the dead faer creatures shrank, and withered and turned back into the mist and magic from what they had been conjured. All that was left were five impressions in the ground, a torn skin, and the quickly fading, faintly glowing spatters of blood.
A moment later, Kveldulf felt something warm and wet pass along his fingers. Still in the company of nothing but empty, cold air he looked at the back of his hand, and stretched it out in front of him. A streak of pale faer blood ran along the skin, much as if the arm had been licked by a very large, very bloodied tongue.
-oOo-
Two hours later and it was raining. The drum of water falling on the thatch of the cottage and the irregular drip-drop of runoff made for an almost musical sound. Helg sat in her chair, a tangle of forgotten knitting on her lap, and listened to the lull of the rain. The shawl she was knitting had not proved much of a distraction while waiting for Kveldulf. After making three mistakes in one row she gave up. Perhaps she could mix some blue in with the pattern? Helg did like blue, though any blue dye that held better than wode was expensive.
When a knock rapped on the door, she craned her head briefly around before turning here gaze back to the fire. "Just about nodded off to sleep waiting for you. It's not locked."
The door creaked open, but no footsteps heralded his entrance. A chill draught guttered the flames and Helg had to turn about again. "The door is not locked against shutting it either." Kveldulf's hair and skin glistened with rain. There was no movement about him but for the purls of rain that rolled over his skin. He did not even shiver. His eyes stared with a haunted intensity.
"Come in, come in." Helg frowned. "You'll catch your death's cold out there." Then knotting her brow, she checked herself. "Or in your case, I suppose not. You'll be miserable with cold anyways, and you are letting a chill in. And maybe I'll catch my death's cold, eh? Try not to track mud onto my floor." She watched in silence as he stepped across the threshold, pulled off his mud-streaked boots. Each of his movements was perfunctory. She tutted her tongue with exasperation. "Men, always making a mess and never cleaning up after themselves."
When he spoke, his voice was clear but devoid of emotion. "I have been thinking."
"Good. Now there is something you have not been doing enough of, eh?" The knitting she heaped into her wool basket. "Spot of tea?"
Without seeming to hear her, Kveldulf paced across the room. The sodden soles of his hose left wet footprints on the floor. The cottage allowed him only a dozen steps before he had to turn and pace back again. "I should go away. Lose myself deep in the wilds. Find some place where no one else lives. Some place where I will not be a threat to anyone. Perhaps, eventually, I will grow old and die. Given enough time."
"No."
"What?" Kveldulf stopped and looked both angry and amused. "It seems the best thing to me."
"It seems the worst thing to me. How long have you been running, Kveldulf? How long have you been denying yourself? And now you want to run farther and further? Deny yourself to the point of living like a beast in some godforsaken wilderness? No, that is wrong."
He neither moved nor let his face express anything other than grave attention. "Then tell me, what would you suggest? That I go on happily as I am? My hands are stained with enough blood, I think."
She gave a small, dry chuckle: "Then it is time to unstain them." She ran he
r fingers over her skirt. "Now where's the kettle-snatch? Ah, where I left it of course." Using a crooked length of iron she hooked the kettle off the hearth and set it on a worn old potholder. Steam boiled out of its mouth. "Running," said Helg, more to herself than to Kveldulf, "always running. When will you stop running? Here now, get this down your gullet," and she held out a mug of tea.
He took the mug in two hands, and inhaled deeply, evidently savouring the rich steam. The tension in his face drained away a little. His shoulders sagged. "What can I do then?" Sitting down on one of the stools, he took a sip. "What can I do?"
"Take off your wet shirt for a start. Here, I'll get you a blanket."
He laid the mug aside and removed his jerkin before wrapping his shoulders in the rough blanket of grey wool that Helg offered him. She watched him fidget against the wool. "It itches," he said without much emotion. "So all these years have I been chasing myself? Running from myself? It does not seem right. It does not seem real. How can I have been such a blind fool? What am I to do?"
"Learn to master yourself. Didn't you yourself tell your friend there that there is no good or evil in magic? And don't go denying it, I heard you. If you had mastered yourself years ago, you would not be in this situation. But no. You let you magic run wild, like a dog off a chain, and it did what it did best. It hunted. And when it was bored with hunting deer and sheep, maybe it did hunt dogs? And when it was bored with dogs--" Her voice trailed away. "You are quite the silly ninny. What have you been doing all these years?"
With an icy smile he said, "Killing, it seems."
"Granted. But, more to the point, you have been denying what is as plain as your nose, and just as much a part of you. How many mornings did you wake up all cut and scratched? How many sheep and horses have turning up dead when you pass through a town? How many people?"
He set the tea down, sat for a moment deathly still, then leaned forward and held his head against a balled fist. "I cannot recall..."
"Because you have worked very, very hard to forget. Well, if you are going to keep on running, then that is just fine and dandy." She waved a finger at him. "But I will not be here in another century to come crying to. Oh dear-oh-me-oh-my, good folks keep getting themselves slaughtered around me. Whatever am I to do?" The last words she spoke were almost cruel with sarcasm "Woe. Is. Me."
With a trembling hand, he picked up the mug of tea again. "I just need to think." Two rust hued drops spilled on the wood as his grip faltered.
"No, what you need is sleep. You look like the Night Queen herself has been riding your shoulders."
"She has." He took a sip of the tea. "Or have I been riding hers?"
Helg sat back by the fire and folded her hands over her lap. "Oh, whoop de do. Poor dramatic you."
As Kveldulf sipped the tea, his eyes grew steadily swollen and red-rimed, until they looked boiled. Soon he was desperately blinking back sleep.
Helg raised a querying eyebrow. "There's a nice pile of furs over there. You can stretch out, drop right off I warrant."
Through a stifled yawn he replied, "not tired."
"Yes you are."
She watched the realisation dawn on his face. His weary gaze fell to the mug of tea, now almost empty. "Oh," he said before slouching forward. As his brow touched the table his eyes shut and his breathing turned deep and steady.
In the moment that sleep took him, the air all about his body began to simmer. A gust of wind ghosted through the house, billowing the hearth-fire into a roar of flames and clattering through the pots, salted meats and charms that hung from the rafters. As the wind died, and the blaze turned back to a steady smoulder, a shadowy apparition appeared in the room. It solidified as if it approached through a blanket of fog. It was, thought Helg, quite a regal beast, in its own, predatory way, with its eyes like frozen dawn and its sleek black fur. Turning a long muzzle to Kveldulf's sleeping body it sniffed, once, profoundly. "A mean trick," said the wolf and its voice was the sound of wild hunts from time out of mind.
"I still had some of my sleeping draught left," and she snuffed indignantly. "And clearly, you were going to try and stay awake until you fell over from exhaustion. Now, I'll have to lug him... you, I suppose... over to the furs. You show no respect for the work you give your elders by just dropping off where-so-ever you likes." She fixed a questioning gaze upon the wolf. "Would you like to see yourself? I've a mirror hereabouts."
Indecision hung in the air. The wolf sniffed again the sleeping Kveldulf and said eventually, "Yes."
The mirror was an old oval piece, with a frame of filigree wood. It clinked as Helg picked it up from a shelf near a window.
Pawing closer, the wolf narrowed its firelit eyes, stared into the reflection, and made a throaty sound that was half-growl, half rumination. As his eyes danced from mirror to Helg, his voice turned deep, primal and velvety: "But you not afraid of me?"
"No. Anywhere else in the Veld, and yes, I would be knocking my knees together. But here? I am no petty hedge-witch, Kveldulf. This is my domain." She waved a roving hand to take in the room. "Here is the seat of all my charms and powers. I have my arts, and you should not think to test them. You would find it unpleasant, I think." Bu then Helg sighed, put the mirror back on the table, and let her voice relax into something friendlier. "So, what will you do tonight? Go play in the dark woods?"
"The wilds would be pleasant. Cold air, and clear, fresh rain. I smell deer."
Helg shambled past the wolf, and with her skeletal, mottled hand, she eased open the door. "Then go, if you want it. Take the night. Do as you always do. Hunt and forget."
The wolf stood poised, as if ready to spring forward and pounce on the night itself. All the hair along his back bristled. "I was trying to remember something. Trying to keep something in mind when I feel asleep."
"Really? Well I don't suppose it matters much. You can go and hunt, and remember it tomorrow, yes?"
"No. It was important."
"And what was it?"
The wolf shook its head and its mane, not quite grey, not quite black gleamed and shone as it did. "Perhaps a hunt... perhaps..."
The sound of the door slamming shut was enough to cause Sigurd to stir, but not wake. The wolf hunched back like a dog with a cat on its nose.
"I really tried to give you a chance, Kveldulf. I let you make a choice. Let you decide. But again, you choose the hunt, the wild night, the forgetting. Again you choose to shirk you mortal soul." Helg began advancing on him, her one eye a tight slit, her weak fists trembling. "How can I hope to help you, if you will not help yourself?" She saw the thought occur to the wolf, spied the gleam in his eyes. It looked from to the closed door to her again. Quick as a shadow it leapt the table and landing lightly, bounding for the door. Helg raised an old hand and snarled out an old name of power. The wolf never made it to the door. It crashed mid-air into invisible hands and was forced, struggling, to the floor of the humble cottage. Snarling and biting, it let out a scream. "Let go of me. Let go! I will tear you limb from limb. I will kill you, rend you apart."
"I doubt that very much, Kveldulf." Helg was standing over the wolf now, glaring. "Quit your struggling. What were you trying to recall? What, Kveldulf? What?"
Dishevelled and panting, the wolf stilled. Its great eyes like liquid amber turned distant. "I was trying to remember something. A decision."
"Yes?"
"I had decided something. Before I fell asleep."
"And?"
The wolf shook its head, and firelight cast an orange sheen over its fur, a glow that rippled with each small movement. "I promised myself that I would not go hunting. I would not give in to the lure of the hunt. Not tonight. Not ever. I would control myself."
Helg grinned and all her old, yellow teeth shone in the light. "The wild night beckons. You said it yourself, pup, it calls you."
"I am not listening."
"The wild, Kveldulf, it calls to you. There are swift deer nibbling the last shoots of autumn, and fat swine munc
hing acorns. The rain sings in the trees. The stream burbles music, tra-la-la-de-la. Do you not want all of that for your own?"
"No. Not ever again."
Slowly, very slowly Helg let the sorcery ease from the wolf's back. "So, maybe there is some humanity left in you after all? I was beginning to wonder. Are you a man who walks as a wolf, or a wolf who walks as a man?" She shrugged. "But there may be some hope for you."
"I will not hunt." The words sounded more hopeful than certain.
"Good. You can spread yourself by the fire if you like. Just don't get too close. There is pine on the hearth, and it does tend to spit and pop." She shook her head. "No wait, on second thought it would not do to have Sigurd wake up during the night and find a great, shadowy wolf lounging in my cottage. Best if you go out and spend the night in the woodshed, I think."
"I would rather stay here."
"Of course you would. Away from the temptation of the night?"
"Yes."
"You will have to face it sooner or later, Kveldulf. Better sooner than later." Helg did not bother to walk to the door. She reopened it with a wave of the hand and then said, "out you go, boy."
The wolf snarled and said, "call me that again and I'll," but Helg breathed a sigh and cut him off. "Really, I haven't got all night, and now, I am letting the cold in. The way you disregard the trouble it takes to keep a house warm, I half think you were born in the snow."
With reluctance in every movement the wolf that was Kveldulf's other self rose to its feet and padded to the door. He stood frozen and sniffed the air.
"The woodshed is over there. To the right."
"Thank you." And he trotted into the inky black of the night, and disappeared into the shed.
Helg sighed and shut the door.
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