She nodded into his tunic. “If you say I’ll be safe, then I believe you.”
“There is something else,” he said. “I’ll not abandon you there. You will need me sometimes. But I will be busy. No leader can claim all his choices to himself and there’s a great deal to organise in a realm such as mine. I also tutor the young ones, including Egil, though I may now pass that task to another. But I’ve been long gone on your business, and must return to my own. I am planning war. My enemy will already have shaped his plans.”
“Grimr,” she whispered.
“When that happens, I intend taking you with me,” he said. “And once the land is cleared and sweet again, I can arrange to transport you to some other safe place. In the meantime, you may see little of me.”
“I understand,” she said, tight voiced.
“And if,” he continued, “you continue to blow your very small nose on my clothes, I shall be constrained, purely in self defence, to go and sit elsewhere, which would be a shame. Holding you is far more comfortable.”
She giggled into his tunic instead. “I don’t blow my nose. It’s just that you make it all sound so very – dismal. I think I’ll feel very alone. Not frightened. Just lonely.”
His hand slipped around the neck of her shirt as before, his fingers gentle against the renewed warmth of her skin. “Haven’t you always been lonely?” he said softly. “Isn’t everyone?”
“Being like you, and having to grow up amongst men? Yes.” She sighed. “And me, with my brothers and step-mother. Until I found Egil.”
He shook his head. “Not just us. No one transanima is like any other. Not only are our creatures diverse, but some are multiple. We each carry a stronger or weaker link. We’re each utterly different. Few of us truly understand the other. Do human men understand each other more easily?”
“I think you understand me better than any man has ever bothered to do,” she said very softly.
“Then,” he said more cheerfully, “that’s a sad reflection on your race, since I find you quite likeable. Unfortunately, I doubt if many of the werepeople will agree with me. No one’s ever brought a human amongst us before. It’s also a shame there aren’t any females at my halls.”
“I’ve never found females anymore biddable than men,” Skarga sniffed.
“Really?” he smiled. “I usually find them remarkably biddable. But then, what I bid them do is invariably quite simple. And afterwards I leave.”
It was something Skarga didn’t want to think about. “I’ll be very good,” she assured him. “I’ll be quiet and stay out of the way. If I could have a corner to myself? Perhaps a bed I can shut.”
“Did you think I’d throw you in amongst the men?” He laughed. “No, I can get someone to dig you out a corner if you wish it.” He paused a moment before continuing. His hand had slipped deeper into the neck of her shift, his fingers caressing the line of her collar bone, the roughened pad of his thumb against her skin, just brushing the rise of her breast. Then he said, “But you’ll be safer and more private in my bed.”
It had been so insistently in her mind and she had banished the thought so relentlessly, afraid he would read it, that now she stiffened and pulled away. It was not Thoddun in her mind anymore, it was Grimr. “I don’t want that,” she said. “That’s not freedom.”
He smiled, and clasped her more firmly, one arm to her waist and the other to the back of her neck, restraining and holding her close. “Silly cub,” he said to her ear. “And you haven’t been listening. I’ve warned you I’ll see little of you, with my time restricted and mostly spent elsewhere. You can have my bed, child, but you can have it to yourself. None of my people would ever dare come there, or try to touch you. I’ll sleep in some other place but my bed would be the greatest protection I could offer.”
She tried desperately hard not to sniff. “I’m sorry. I thought –”
“I know what you thought,” he interrupted her. “You’ll learn to trust me in time. As long as I can keep myself trustworthy, of course. For the moment, I think I’ve tired you enough with my speeches.” He set her down, wrapping the bearskin once more around her, and stood. He crossed to the wall by the entrance and picked up something she had not seen in the shadows. When he came back to her, he was holding a short flat stick and a pile of folded linen. “I collected what I need from my halls. I’m going to treat your ankle,” he said. “But it will hurt.”
“I’m not scared of being hurt,” said Skarga with derision. “And it hurts all the time anyway.”
He knelt, then took her injured foot onto his lap and flicked her skirts back from the ankle. When he unwound the stocking bandage, the pain burst out like an explosion. She tightened her jaw and stared down in dismay at the huge purple swelling. Thoddun looked back up at her. She thought he looked stern. “It’s bent,” he said. “I’ll have to straighten it. I can’t risk leaving you lame for life. Do you want something to bite on or hold to?”
She blinked hard. “I don’t think that’ll help,” she said. “I’ll be all right.”
“You can’t have my hand, I’ll need both to straighten the bones,” said Thoddun briefly, his fingers now warm around her foot. Then he nodded and setting her heel back gently on the ground, came around behind, sitting with his legs either side, enclosing her, lifting her onto his lap. “Now,” he said, “grab the inside of my elbows. It doesn’t matter about how hard you squeeze, it won’t worry me in the least. And yell if you want to. I shan’t be in the slightest impressed just because you get sick refusing to cry. So, bend your knee up for me, little one, and hang on tight.”
He was so fast, and so abrupt, that it was done before she had time to dread it. She didn’t yell, but gulped and felt dizzy. He held her for a moment, arms enclosing her, then set the splint to her ankle and bound it with the fresh linen strips. Finally he took the stocking which had previously served as a bandage, and began to stretch it back over her toes and up her leg. His hands were efficient, even a little rough, as he rolled the wool into its place around the top of her thigh, and pulled down her skirt again. He looked at her and smiled. “It should now mend well enough. Do you feel sick?”
She nodded and swallowed. So he took her fully into his arms and rocked her like a baby until her stomach calmed and the shuddering eased. She was crying but more from relief than pain and although her ankle throbbed, it hurt far less than it had before. So she curled meekly into his arms and sobbed quietly into the front of his tunic where lately it had become more soiled from her own contact than from natural wear.
Thoddun stroked her hair, easing it back from her forehead, fingers into the loose, untamed curls, as earlier he had fondled the dogs. But when one wandering hand again found her breast, he paused, his palm firm and briefly purposeful. She thought he held his breath a moment, but then sighed and carefully moved his hand away.
She had quite missed one breath herself. Then she stopped crying with a sniff. Finally she whispered, with more courage than she had needed for the straightening of her cracked ankle, and even more courage than she had needed to attack the ice bear, “I don’t mind, if you want to.”
He was silent for some time, holding and rocking her, both hands now around her waist. Finally he said, in a voice no louder than her own, “It would not be wise, little one. I am not the right person for you. You do not want me intimately in your life. I would do you no good at all.”
CHAPTER SIX
Wide carved doors hinged in wrought iron, low arches, doorways barricaded to keep out the world of men. Then the doors swung open for the sled to speed inwards, and the castle became sparkling white. An open courtyard spread beneath the snow. Walls, thick as any stone, in soaring ice with a thousand star reflections splashed across their shadows. Another archway, wide carved doors again, swinging silent as the sled sped through. The dogs did not hesitate.
Inside, more tunnels, covered corridors where the snow stopped and the wind was shut out. No candle lit gloom within, but a natural ligh
t, thin beams caught, recaught, refracted and reflected, and from a hundred surfaces the polished brilliance shone and spun. Above their heads, the moonglow lay trapped. Where the walls and pillars were roughhewn, the light spun, and where the gleam settled gentle, it laid in soft pearl, as though the oyster had opened her fluted shell into an endless carpet. The dogs ran on. They knew their way and were eager to be home.
A sudden wide passage opened to the spreading ocean, the waters lapping across the bounded ice. The bright white walls changed to a distant horizon of winter black where the ice became more blue than silver, the shadows more violet than grey.
On again into the warmer places, the sled swung, still fast around the hurtling bends, and into a waiting busyness. A host of people stood, the dogs stopped and the sled slid still, spinning snow-spray into rainbows. Thoddun, grinning, jumped down. One of the men bent immediately and unharnessed the dogs, releasing them. Orm strode forward. He grasped Thoddun’s shoulders. Others clasped his hands in greeting. Skarga recognised Lodver, and Safn whom she’d seen in the south. Egil scurried between them all and hopped up to the sled’s bench. He grabbed Skarga, babbling and laughing.
Skarga could barely understand him. “He’s really brought you? Well, I can see he has, but I never expected it. Here, amongst everyone! At first I thought you’d been killed when the tunnels caved in. Did you think I had too? But no one died at all and it happened for the best because now you’re here where it’s the most wonderful place. You will stay, won’t you? Lord Thoddun said you’d been hurt but you look fine. You’re not frightened are you? I’ll look after you, I promise.”
Thoddun looked back over his shoulder. “She doesn’t need your heroics, brat. Go and get us something hot to drink.” Leaving the men, he walked back to the sled and smiled up at Skarga. “Well, child, welcome to my home. You’ve met Orm before. He’s leader here in my absence. And you’ll recognise some of the others.”
Orm bowed. Thoddun held out his arms, took her from the sled and carried her through the open doorway into the great hall. There was a fire burning but its flames were more Verdigris and copper than crimson, and Skarga smelled the strange unnatural fire the transanima could light from the damp earth. She sat quietly where Thoddun set her, still wearing her capes. He immediately went again to talk to Orm.
It was only gradually that she became aware of other sounds. First the seeping drip, drip of continuous melt. Then the steady thrum of the ocean, distant and muffled. Finally, more sinister, a whispering like many feet shuffling through dead leaves, a furtiveness of secrets.
While Thoddun remained talking, it was Egil who came again. He brought her a mug of hot spiced ale with a perfume of other lands. Thoddun wandered over with his own cup in hand. He bent and lowered his voice. “You should accustom yourself slowly to my people. Don’t expect greetings, welcomes, crowds and courtiers. They’re watching you now of course. But they’re wary about showing themselves. Above all, control your thoughts.”
“Yes, you warned me. But apart from Orm, I’ve already met lots of your people, your crew, and in the tunnels down south until the collapse. Men. Bears. None of them avoided me.”
“Those are the transanima who are used to the world of men and have no argument with it,” Thoddun said, “but they’re the minority. You met perhaps forty of my men. There are some two thousand here, almost all the remaining survivors of our race. But amongst these are the dark ones, who know nothing of humanity and will not tolerate it. You must allow them time.”
She didn’t see how she could do anything else. “Can I spend my own time with Egil while you’re busy?”
“I’ll send him to you when you wake. Are you tired now?” he asked, unbending. “Shall I take you to my bed?”
Controlling her thoughts did not come easily. “If,” she glared, “you read what I was just thinking, then just remember not everything I think is – exactly – true – I can’t help ideas drifting around in my head. And I didn’t mean it.”
The twitch at both corners of his mouth seemed particularly restive. “It is just as well,” he said, “that you can’t read my thoughts. Humanity’s blindness has its uses.”
“You mean humanity’s stupidity,” said Skarga, looking away.
“But that,” said Thoddun, “is not what I meant at all,” and he bent again and lifted her, and marched with her out of the hall.
In spite of being a man utterly careless of his appearance, as if clothes were temporary and unimportant, the great symmetry and breadth of his ice home was both beautiful and intricate. The wide tunnels away from the hall led around a sharp bend where a small arch was deeply inset. The door was shut. Thoddun kicked it open. The inner entrance was low and heavy in shadow and she thought that like Grimr, his bed was a shuttered closet. Then he pushed aside a curtain of hanging furs, and the light burst in. He carried her immediately to the bed and there she sat in silent amazement, and stared.
“I’ve ordered crutches made,” he told her. “We have no trees but some wood is brought in. I’m not sure how long it takes human bones to knit and in the meantime, you’ll need to get around. I can’t carry you everywhere and Egil is too small.” Skarga remained speechless. Thoddun frowned, following her gaze. “No doubt this isn’t to human taste,” he said, “but you’ll be safer and more private here.”
It was the first time she had ever known him to misunderstand her so completely. “Not human taste?” she breathed. “But it’s glorious. I would never have imagined – it’s perfect.”
He moved away, still watching her, as if careful of her reactions. “I hope to make you reasonably comfortable. But it won’t always be possible. I’ll send Egil to you as soon as you wake. We’ve talked quite sufficiently on the journey, certainly far more than my habit, and you should be tired enough of my company by now. I have other responsibilities.”
She was still breathless. “I don’t think I’ll sleep. And how will you know when I wake?”
“I’ll know,” he said. He was gone at once and she sat quietly on the great bed and looked around for a long time.
The mattress was vast, feather filled and heaped in silks, pillows and furs. There was soft wool, fine linen and a quilt of down, covered in tapestries the colour of fire. The silks fluttered and drifted, tipping from the sides of the bed in a hundred brilliant colours, embroideries and golden borders. Black lay against crimson, indigo against lapis, saffron on emerald. The covers rustled as she moved, tumbling to the floor, or piled in their own myriad welter. Very like Grimr’s, this was a king’s couch and wide enough for several people to curl together. But this bed, instead of being enclosed within walled darkness, was open to a magical light reflected in brilliance – and to the water. The water spanned one sheet of singing silver across the entire end of the chamber.
It was a large room. Enclosed only by a curtain of furs, it was sheltered against the endless freeze by many more. Furs of many kinds lay across the bed, more strewn and covering the ground. There was a high bench holding cups, platters, iron bowls and a jumble of other objects, none arranged but some beautiful and decorative, silver, gold, walrus ivory and whalebone. There was a pottery basin for washing, combs and scissors, the usual implements for grooming, but some broken and none laid out for careful use. A clutter of implements, candles, torn linens, soapstone platters and silver cups, used or unused, forgotten or remembered. There was a low table set between two heavy chairs, an oil lamp on the table, cushions on the chairs. The lamp was lit and all the facets of its light reflected, bounding from amethyst to jade, wall to wall. Several sea chests with elaborate carvings and brass locks stood random. It was a place of casual comfort with rich colours against the white, but at the distant end by the water’s cascade the damp crept in with a haze of insidious moss, mould on the furs and discarded silks bleached into ice. It was one vast cave built in blocks of solid translucence, curved, uneven, glorious, hidden behind the plunge of a steep and massive waterfall.
From the roof where the i
ce was split open to the window of the water, icicles grew down in twisted white and blue daggers, some tiny, some longer, and within trapped weed lay cradled, a scatter of pebble caught and frozen in descent, turned to jewelled beads set in glass. The winter black was open behind, but its shroud barely entered, with all suggestion of cold night locked out. Then tumbled the thousand shades of water, and the glittering music of its plunge.
It was the water music that lulled her to sleep and the same music that woke her again, eventually, to the strange room and its unveiled whispers. Egil came in quietly, as though in awe of the place that was usually Thoddun’s. “I’m never allowed in here,” he whispered. “No one is.”
He had brought her the crutches. “I’ll need a lot of practise,” she grabbed his hand and tugged him down to sit by her. “It’s really walking on ice here.”
Egil regarded the respected chamber and its remarkable and unremarkable display of secrets, now open to him. He returned his gaze to Skarga. “What was it like,” he said eventually, “coming all that way? I mean alone, just you and him. Are you still frightened of him? And I know he didn’t think much of you before.” Egil smirked slightly. “Well, it was fairly obvious.”
Skarga wriggled up from the sweat of bedding and leaned against the wall behind, arranging body and thoughts. “He’s – it was alright.”
“That bad?” said Egil.
“These crutches,” said Skarga quickly. “How kind of – someone. Though I’ll slip everywhere.”
“Better start practising,” Egil said. “Now the lord’s back there’ll be feasts. Pageants and festivals. It’s winter rations, but celebrating’s different. Lord Thoddun’s return is important to everyone. Then there’s you. You know, don’t you, humans just never come here. There’s transanima who haven’t seen a human woman for years and years. There’s plenty will want to see what you’re like. Reassure themselves.”
Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy Page 36