Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  “He is not a thing.” Thoddun frowned. “You saw the orca, which is also called the sea-wolf. Now I will answer you, though within limits, and my answers cannot convey the whole truth.”

  “I will try and understand,” Skarga said, hugging her knees.

  Thoddun nodded. “Then I will tell you something of my story,” he said. She watched him carefully as he spoke, and he watched her, speaking softly and clearly and slowly. “I am sea-wolf,” he said. “I am sea-eagle. I am sea-bear. And I am man. I am a man who loves the sea. I am all these things. I carry the fourfold anima of the Werebeasts and the sea unites me. As men recognise me as man, and will do my bidding when I enforce it, so do the orca recognise me and obey my orders. The sea-eagles know me and follow me. The sea-bears accept me and will sometimes serve me. I can take their shape, and I can be one amongst them, but still be recognised by the others. As an eagle, the bears still know me. As a bear, I am still seen by the orca. As a man I can speak to them all. I can smell the uneasy souls of others of my kind and that is what I hunt, to find and unite those who carry the shifting anima. I know the thrill of the deepest seas and the wind through the stars, the vast snows of the north where ice rises in floating mountains, and the soft green of humanity’s comfortable pastures. There are few places in this world that I cannot explore, but the ocean is always my horizon.”

  For a moment she was silent, enchanted. Then she whispered, “And Egil?”

  “Egil is the boy you know,” said Thoddun, “but his spirit is divided between humanity and the golden eagle’s wild skies. He is learning to be both, or one, or the other, as he chooses, and as the currents of life take him. But he is not burdened by more than one Shift. He can tell you these things himself, if he wishes to, when you wake.”

  “He seems embarrassed, talking about it to me. Does it frighten him?” asked Skarga.

  “Not anymore,” said Thoddun. “But these are questions to ask of him. I have come here to answer for myself, and to explain something of my people. I choose only to satisfy what curiosity you have that might otherwise interfere with my plans.”

  “So your plans include me?” said Skarga, sitting forwards. “Or just Egil? So are you worried Egil might choose to follow me instead of you? Are you like Grimr after all? Do you mean to control me?”

  “I do not discuss my plans,” Thoddun said briefly. “If you have other questions, ask them.”

  She sat back a little. “You said you love your - curse. Were you frightened, before you understood your powers? Do you call them powers?”

  “Yes, I call them powers,” frowned Thoddun, “since that is what they are. And no, I was not frightened. I was disgusted. Now perhaps it is time for you to sleep without dreaming. When you wake, I will send Egil to you.”

  “Will I see you again?” said Skarga.

  He stared at her, again irritated, raising one eyebrow. “Naturally,” he said. “How would you not, since you are now my guest?”

  He stood, towering over her like the shadow of the beast. She shrank back a little. “Will you,” she asked softly, “show me? What it’s like to – change?”

  His expression became cold and for a moment he did not move. Then he said, “Undoubtedly you are a fool.” He turned abruptly and strode from the fur strewn cave.

  When Skarga woke the second time, it was not Thoddun sitting on the sealskins beside her, but Egil. It was still dark, since the world above did not enter in any place. Skarga felt, however, wonderfully rested.

  “Are you starving?” said Egil.

  “Yes, I am,” said Skarga. “It must be days since I ate more than half a biscuit. Thoddun said something about a feast. Am I allowed to get up? Go where I want?”

  Egil reached for her hand. “Lady, you’re not a prisoner here, I promise. You’re Thoddun’s guest, like me. Alright, I admit he’s a slightly reluctant host, but he won’t do anything to hurt you. Of course you can explore, though you’ll get lost unless you take me with you. Sometimes I get lost too. And if you want to leave here you can, but I don’t see why you’d want to keep running away.”

  “You trust him then?” Skarga let him take her hand.

  “He’s my tutor and my lord and my friend.” Egil sighed. “I’ve always loved you; you’re my mother. For all my life, you were my one friend. But now I love Thoddun too. He’s my master, not because I’m his slave, or anyone’s slave anymore, but because he’s my king.”

  He led her back into the ice tunnels. Where she had seen no doorways, now she saw arches and long passages lit with torch flicker. The soft sibilance of melt was constant. The whispered drip of seepage and the hushed rhythm of insidious liquid were the only sounds in an eternal quiet. Then Egil brought her to a wide open doorway with a bursting suddenness of boisterous noise and the scent of roasting meat. The hall was log lined, strapped, bound and banked against the ice outside. The ceiling was planked like a ship’s hull and the floor was deep spread with rushes, then more furs heaped back against walls and benches. The central hearth was built in stone around a pillar of wood, like a mast with the hearth as kjerringa. The flames of the fire spread, circling the mast with golden guarding fire. There was venison roasting on the spit and a cauldron bubbling with the sound of the incoming tide. Meat juices hissed where they fell. Well, at least, she thought, though a little ashamed, they do not eat it raw, as the animals do.

  The space was full of drinking, laughing men. Skarga recognised some of the crew from Thoddun’s serpent langskip. Thoddun sat amongst them. He took no high backed chair of state as Grimr, Vilgeroar and her father had, with no proclamation of honoured chieftainship. Thoddun simply lounged on the furs and watched his men. He drank from a long horn. Skarga thought him intoxicated. Even before knowing something of his strange story, she had never doubted that he was dangerous. She thought that being very drunk would make him more dangerous still.

  Egil went over to him at once and sat at his feet. Thoddun placed a protective hand on the boy’s shoulder, bent and said something to him, then leaned back, smiling. Skarga stood for a moment. There seemed no place set aside for her and she was immediately shy. She felt the crew watching her. If all these men were like Thoddun, then she was undoubtedly resented. Even the faces she recognised made no answering gesture of friendship. She squeezed tight beside Egil, curling on the fur cushions.

  Thoddun spoke to Egil. “Well, brat,” he said, “tonight you may serve us both. I’ll judge how you grace my hospitality.”

  Egil jumped up and hurried over to the far wall where the great casks of wine stood far from the firelight, chilled in the ice shadows. Skarga looked at Thoddun, took a deep breath and remembered her manners. “Thank you, my lord,” she raised her voice a little over the surrounding joviality. “And for answering my questions and telling me about Egil and yourself. And I’m not so stupid. I have understood a great deal.”

  Thoddun smiled slightly but it did not reach his eyes. “I doubt it,” he replied. “Nor am I drunk. You will know it when I am. And I may tell you, madam, the transanima, when meekly wearing their human skins, do not tear at raw carcasses or drink blood, nor rip the throats from their victims. You need not be ashamed, yet, in our company.”

  Skarga blushed. “It isn’t fair to read my thoughts.”

  “Is it meant to be fair and just then, this world of yours?” said Thoddun. “But you are correct in one thing. I can most certainly be dangerous when I wish it, and also sometimes when I do not intend it. You should not know people like me, lady, nor attempt to understand us. It is unwise. And invariably dangerous.”

  Skarga lifted her chin. “Is that a threat, then? Should I be frightened?”

  Thoddun leaned back and watched her a moment. “Remember, madam, I am what I have told you I am,” he said. “But I am not threatening you. I informed you once, and will remind you of it now, if I ever mean to attack I will do so without warning or threat. But I am not interested in rape. I am not Grimr. I have heard from your mind some idea of what he did to y
ou. Although I find pleasure in the hunt, I hunt only for food, and not for pleasure.”

  Skarga blushed again. “Do you know Grimr so well? Why is he your enemy?”

  “I have stopped answering questions,” said Thoddun. He seemed to retreat into the shadows and his eyes turned within. He had shut her off.

  Egil brought food and wine. Being neither the flat sour ale nor the sweet mead to which Skarga was accustomed, the wine tasted good but the food was plain. The meat slipped tender from its bone. The perfume was seductive and the taste delicious, but there were no luxurious ingredients, nothing compiled into extraordinary complexity or exotic variety, no cooking woman’s pride. Indeed, there seemed to be no women at all. Skarga wondered if the transanima produced no females. Did they not marry then, between themselves? Not daring to ask, she hoped her thoughts remained private. Thoddun spoke to his men and to Egil, but he did not speak to her. She felt, inexplicably, that a candle had blown out.

  Skarga drank a little of the fine wine, quickly finding not confidence but intoxication, knowing herself as inebriated as she had believed Thoddun to be. She remembered the same confusion from the Sheep Islands after drinking only common ale, and wondered if Thoddun had drugged her, as Grimr sometimes had. She struggled for simple focus. Contemptuous of the brutality in her father’s hall, bored by men drinking to escape their own dull company and wary of drunken brawls, she was always careful, when possible, of her sobriety. Now she was dizzy. Then the men began to sing, and she was entirely lost.

  As he had at sea when the dolphins leapt, Thoddun’s second in command, Orm, began to chant. His thin yellow hair was plaited and tied serpentine at the nape of his neck, his beard and moustache so thick Skarga could barely see his mouth. But she saw his tongue, elongated as a whip. His eyes were misty in exaltation as his voice rose, rich as tidal waves. She remembered the same rhythm from the boat and the twilit evenings on the island. The words were of some other language, but now Egil was singing them too. Then she realised that Thoddun was watching her. He did not look away when she stared back. She knew her thoughts, placid but inane, had first made him angry. But he could not read her thoughts now, for she was incapable of thinking at all.

  The men encircled Thoddun where he sat, crowding tight around. Egil, still cradled to his legs, folded his arms across Thoddun’s lap, resting his head there, still chanting as though half asleep. Thoddun continued to lean back against his furs, silent, and staring only at Skarga. She could not look away and could not blink. His watchfulness engulfed her. The music spun and lifted her but Thoddun’s eyes held her motionless. Then the blue of his gaze became the ocean and the music became the tide. The waves crashed through her ears in turquoise thunder. She was pulled into the sea and began to swim.

  There was no air. The colours changed. There was no wooden hall, nor clustered crowds of men, no fire, nor the smell of food. There was a frosty cold that delighted her as if each particle of freeze was an exhilaration and symbolised freedom, yet freedom was the most terrifying of all for the boundaries were banished. Then she twisted, brought the surge of the current with her, and knew her own power and great strength, flashed her tail and swept the heaving waves around the huge bulk of her body. She luxuriated within the waters, wrapping herself in their force, riding the waves, cutting through and taming them, enthralled by speed.

  Then the colours became astonishing and alive. Refractions of lights swam with her like breathing things, huge slanting beams of unadulterated magnitude in blazing tones never seen before. The blackness was alive with spangle, the blues were crystallised in jewelled facets, the greens floated as if curled knot work carvings in forests of weed waving taller than pines in the wind. Gold darted between the drowning sunbeams, flashed upon the greenery and turned emerald to vermillion.

  She was part of the sea but she was also its master. She leapt from the water, the delicious chill changing suddenly to a balmy warmth, and then back into the dark swirling magic of the depths.

  There were fish in the ocean, a darting silveryness with a swift scent of anticipated hunger, but too small yet to arouse excitement. She turned away, flexing the pure beauty of her muscles, smooth as the water itself. Then she dived. The incredible dark billowed up to meet her, rich scents again, of underwater things that creep and wallow, mysterious things long dead and long forgotten, but all relinquishing their perfumes, tantalising, under the deepest waves. The colours sped. The blackness swallowed everything, including herself. She bathed in black.

  The booming became louder. What had been a melody, the haunting chant, became thunder. It closed upon her, entering her mind through her skin, until the succulence of the freeze melted as she quickly rose. So the dark became light once more and the melody returned and the water’s churning rhythms played over her body in soft fingered caresses.

  Feeling the urgency of her lungs, and lifting her fins from the water, she gulped the pure briny air. It filled her. From beneath the water she saw the life above as an abstract dazzle, but once entered, taken up in that one astonishing burst, the world of air shrank into familiarity, pale colours and mundane shapes. She breathed. She knew the thrill of satisfaction, the flutter of a breeze against her dorsal fin, delighted in it for one moment, but again yearned for the cold, and with all the strength of her magnificent weight, sank again. The chilled deep took her back. The glory of underwater colours reassembled. The beauty reasserted. With the power of the new air within her, she trembled and twisted, and dived. The water world was hers once more, with a sudden fizz of bubbles and the unutterable joy of a kaleidoscope home.

  Then she heard a voice from a distance, Thoddun’s voice in the back of her mind. “I am beginning to find you interesting after all.”

  When she woke she was back in bed, wrapped in seal skins, breathing damp air and crying softly to herself.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  After the dream of the orca, the following day seemed hopelessly dull and instead of the magic which had swept her up the night before, now she awoke into a small threadbare desolation. A great sense of loss gripped her. Memories of the sea beast entwined with scatterings of dreams.

  Skarga tried to remember, willing herself to re-enter the magic and regain the deep thrill. But the sense of loss was the stronger and her head was heavy with bewilderment.

  Egil was impatient. “What’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “There’s so much to see. We could even go above ground if you miss the sky, but there’s only snow up there and the endless mountains. I go up sometimes, but only when Thoddun or Safn take me, and that’s for the lessons.”

  “Lessons?”

  Egil looked away. “Flying lessons. The cliffs – it’s great eagle country. But I can’t talk about that with you, lady.”

  She stared at his blushes. “Embarrassed? Yet you think Thoddun’s wonderful because he can - change – into something else.”

  Egil rubbed his nose. “I don’t think he’s wonderful because he can Change. I think he’s wonderful because he is wonderful. Some of these men, well they’re all transanima but they’re not all wonderful. But talking with them about the Shift feels fine. Talking with you makes me feel - peculiar.”

  Skarga sighed. “Tell me about the chanting then. How do you know the words? Last night, with the music, strange things happened.”

  He shook his head. “The music just comes, like sounds in the sky, the wind blowing and the rain building up in the clouds, leaves falling, sun on the dew. They aren’t real words. It’s feelings turning into sound. I don’t think I can explain. You have to ask Thoddun.”

  Skarga lowered her voice. “He was angry last night. With things I’d been thinking. I hate him reading my thoughts. It’s – disconcerting. But when the chanting started he took me inside his head. At least, that’s what it felt like. He showed me under the ocean. I was the sea beast too. Flying must be like that, only warmer.”

  Egil sniggered. “Not out here it isn’t. We fly over the Snow Mountains.”

&nbs
p; They walked the long tunnels, arches of ice high over their heads, a labyrinth of ice, a wandering freeze. The subterranean system covered many miles. As the orca, the cold had thrilled her. As a mortal, it was the challenge of extremities. Skarga slowed her pace. “Of course,” Egil said, tugging her along, “we’re only here for you. Because of me. Thoddun’s real home’s way to the north.”

  “Perhaps he came for Grimr, not for us,” said Skarga. “To kill his enemy.”

  Egil shook his head. “I don’t know anything about Grimr,” he said. “Thoddun looked after me in his castle while I was sick, after drowning. When I was a bit better, I told him I needed to find you. He said he knew where you were. I didn’t ask how. I kept begging him to save you, and eventually he said he would.”

  Skarga smiled. “I can imagine how reluctant he was.”

  Egil stopped to look at her. “One day he said, if you want her, I’ll get her for you. Just like that. Then he brought me here. I didn’t know about these southern tunnels before, and how they just happen to be so close to where you just happened to be. I’ve no idea how that is and he didn’t tell me. It’s not as if Thoddun ever explains himself.”

  “He says I ought to be grateful for any explanations he chooses to make. And I am. But every answer brings up more questions. His fur cloak, for instance. Why is it important? How did he get it back?”

  “Oh, he’d never answer questions like that.” Egil laughed. “He lent it to you first, and then to me. It kept us both safe. Then I suppose he just called it back somehow. He’s the sea bear too.”