“I found he had already helped himself. Both our parents were dead and buried. He had killed them. But where I had discovered myself Fourfold and was blazingly content with all my life, your father had inherited both our father’s dark heart, and his injured channel. Grimr’s channel is the single wolf, but he could not Shift. For many years he had tried, living with the misery of bewilderment, utter failure and lost hope.
“Together we attempted an uncomfortable unity. But your father had taken over governorship of our parent’s land on their death, and since I am the older brother, my return was a threat. It was also a terrible reminder of what he could not have, and the joys of Shifting denied him. His jealousy was understandable. I offered to help, but there was too much humiliation and he tried to kill me. I no longer liked him and in my childish arrogance, I despised him. Your father cannot read minds, but some things he can sense. Perhaps he saw my mind after all. He attacked me in my bed one night, first to replicate the system of sexual reawakening our father tried; to spark a lame or dying channel. Then, furious at failure and repudiation, to murder me.
“Again I left. I travelled north, searching for others like myself. I found many. We are a weakened race, we are dying out and there are few females left for procreation, though indeed most of us are born spontaneously to humans. But during my travels I found many transanima hiding their magic, ashamed of their bestiality, and leaning towards the dark from loneliness and misery. I began to form a community, and I discovered and greatly enlarged the old ice castle from where my mother’s family had originally come. This is the place I inherited and have made my own. I have discovered whatever there is to know about our race, and have learned to lead and tutor them. Here we are safe to be ourselves in freedom. Until you came. I’ve no desire to claim the human township where you’ve grown up. Your father can keep it and proclaim himself king or emperor, chief or potentate. As he wishes. But this realm is not for his meddling, or his bitter revenges.”
He turned to Grimr. Grimr had rested his forehead on the folded backs of his hands, elbows on his knees. He did not look up. “Revenge is sweet,” he murmured. “Every man searches for a necessary vengeance. This place is mine now. You can stay, if you help my son. And I’ll leave it to him when I die.”
Thoddun ignored him. He looked back to Knut. “Revenge is born of hatred,” he said. “But love is always stronger than hatred, though hatred can grow from a misdirected love. It’s a strange thing, and makes no sense at all. Though most of us know how little sense, sense ever makes. As for love, it has a power few of us understand. The greatest love we ever expect to feel is for our channels within. Your father adores his wolf, even though he has never seen it or breathed through it. For him it’s a deeply unrequited love, and a far greater pain than our father could ever inflict. But, denied the love he yearns for, he is still, unexpectedly, capable of finding another.” Knut still stood, small and slim with his eyes peering through the gloom and his hands clenched tight at his sides. He had not moved. He hardly breathed. Thoddun continued, his voice growing softer, and so low that it was little more than the release of his own breath onto the chill air. “And there is something else,” he said, “which explains your father’s determination to remain here, and exercise power, in spite of everything.” He smiled. Now he continued speaking to Knut, but his smile was directed at Grimr. “You see,” he said softly. “There is the woman. It is for her, far more than for me, that he came.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Halfdan cracked the reins, looked down at Skarga at his side, and sniggered. “Cuddle up, lady, if you’re cold.” She had dozed, star glimmer against her eyes, then woke with an embarrassed lurch finding her head on Halfdan’s shoulder. The wind had sharpened while she slept, and the dogs had slowed. She could hardly see their trudging shadows through the bluster. The light had gone, sunset sinking too low for the reflected after-shine, but both black sky and white land were obscured by gale and snow.
She turned from Halfdan’s endless grin. “Another squall,” she muttered. “Shit.”
He saw only the tip of a blue nose visible beneath the hood of her fur cape. “By the hammer, lady, it’s better in the sea,” he told her. “Storms pound on the waves. Echoes, rolling with the currents. It’s fine underwater when the blizzards come.”
“Better underwater for some.” Skarga sighed. “But not for me.”
Egil was shouting from the other sled. “Kjeld says there’s shelter ahead.”
Skarga knew the cave, less than a day’s run from the castle, where she had once rested with Thoddun. He had splinted her broken ankle, and first acknowledged that he wanted her. They were sweet memories now, and she sighed again. Now Kjeld led, driving beneath the great arch of rock and into the quiet chill. The dogs shook the snow from their coats as Halfdan and Kjeld dismounted. At the back of Kjeld’s giant sled and its mountainous baggage, Halfdan’s two companions sat, legs swinging. They hopped down and one lit a torch, flames wild in the encroaching wind from the cave’s mouth. The man marched between the rocky slopes to the edge of the great frozen lake now glistening in the torchlight. “We can break through here,” he called to the others. “I’m back to water. Who else?”
Halfdan shook his head. “You two bugger off. I’ve rumours of our own people way ahead, but swim bloody hard enough and you’ll catch them up. Thoddun’ll need every one of you bastards. I’d best stay with the sled.”
Kjeld was making fire, grumbling to himself. Skarga watched as the fire grew. “Don’t you miss the sea, Kjeld? It’s a long time – forgive me – but, wouldn’t you – don’t you miss Shifting?”
Kjeld blushed tawny pink through bristles of his moustache. “Not likely, lady. Champion. Champion fer m’lady. An’ sled’s mine, ‘tis an’ all.”
Her fingertips were numb, but her thoughts were flying. As she rubbed her hands together to warm them, she gazed up at Kjeld. “I know this cave,” Skarga said. “We’re not far from the castle. So can you – hear Lord Thoddun from here? Has he sent messages? Do you know how he is?”
Forbidden to Shift, Halfdan slumped and shrugged, dreaming of deep waters. “Is. Have,” he muttered. “You can’t hear?”
Skarga shook her head. “Sadly, no.”
Halfdan’s satisfaction flicked at the corners of his mouth. “Humans. Pity, that.”
Kjeld interrupted, “Some doesn’ n’ some hasn’,” he said. “Ittle birds gets tiddlers or nuttin’. An’ some jus’ bloody bottle-nosed pig-headed fish tails.”
“I’m not a little bird,” said Egil coldly. “So is anyone going to tell us the messages?”
“Prisoner,” said Kjeld stoutly. He had pulled out supplies from his own stores and with a mighty rattle of iron, was beginning to cook. “But Lord Thoddun, well now, be’s less of a prisoner than them others reckon. In charge – own room, own bed. Waitin’ fer army. Makes own plans There’s always a plan, with our lord, there be.”
Halfdan said, “Thoddun’s comfy. All a human need to understand, I reckon.”
She was itching to help. For a moment Skarga imagined herself storming the great ice walls, her bow raised, the arrow aimed, ready to loose. She saw Grimr’s face staring back at her and his sudden gulp of fear. A sweet thought. She had never seen what Grimr might look like when afraid. She hoped, quite violently, that one day she would.
Fingertips once more urgent with feeling, Skarga stared into the shadows. Still lost in dream, she loosed her arrow and it hit the mark. The transanima were shouting as they followed her lead, racing across the courtyard to rescue their lord.
Then with a sudden blush, she heard Halfdan snigger, and knew that he had read her thoughts.
She sat in a hurry and pulled the bearskin close around her, breathing in its protection.
At only a small distance over the iced wilds, Thoddun was as comfy as Halfdan had claimed. He could read Skarga’s distant thoughts and had been unable to sleep. He sat cross legged staring towards the wall of singing silver water, elbows on
knees, face in his hands, concentrating on the minds and thoughts of those he called. He communicated directly with Flokki for his sea army was approaching closer to the shallows beneath the castle where fire had flooded the dungeons. The sky army had been forced off course for few birds could fly in a blizzard. They were resting and would wait out the storm where the crags of huge bergs offered some shelter for huddling, heads under their wings or tucked tight to their breast feathers. Thoddun’s mind could still not yet reach Karr underground, nor Lodver and the land army, but his spies had carried messages until they too had been forced down, escaping the howl of the eastern gale. Thoddun now knew where everyone was. He organised a relay of birds so knowledge would continue to reach him. The spring blizzards would always delay those coming by land and sky, but even from roost, rest and shelter, the eagle scouts could pass mind-messages and the system he arranged would enclose him in a circle of constant control. He waited for the first arrivals.
His mind came to rest within Skarga’s thoughts where he could wrap himself. It was a considerable time since he had Shifted to eagle or orca. They also itched, plaintive within, pushing a little at their boundaries, calling for release and recognition. He quietened them, soothing. In the same way he spoke softly to Skarga. Her human mind could not hear him, but she would, he thought, feel the calming closeness of his reassurance. It had happened before. His capacity to reach her and to include her in his travels, bringing her experiences beyond the limitations of humanity, was of intrinsic interest to him. When he had both peace and time, there would be discovery and delight beyond his present understanding. But there was no time and no peace at all, and although he could not sleep, it was his own people that filled his mind, the sea creatures which would come ashore within the castle where the dungeons had been, and after Shifting, become the first army at his disposal.
Skarga’s desire, sweet perfumed across the miles, interrupted his concentration but he turned his thoughts again to Grimr and to war. His chamber was not locked for no one had found his key, which he kept safe. But he was well guarded. Six of the wild ones patrolled the corridor directly beyond his doorway, and six might overpower him, even Bear-Shifted, injured as he was. He waited.
There were many in the ice castle that did not sleep that night. Grimr paced the shivering passages, visiting and talking to the men he had brought from the southern pastures of the Nor-way, giving the reassurances that all leaders give their jarls, and the jarls nodded, disbelieving, and turned away, wishing for their wives.
The boy curled on his pallet, eyes screwed shut against the little candle flame his father had left flickering. Knut’s heart pounded, summoning his channels. He began, almost nauseas with nervous excitement, to practise as his strange new uncle had instructed him. To imagine the wings unfolding against the sun, to comb the huge flight feathers with the mind, loving each tiny detail from the softest down caressing the breast, to the spread talons and the golden eyes staring from the windy blue. Then the bear cub curled in its den, fur soft as duckling down, ears pricked, blinking baby eyes, hoping for the first call.
The ice halls stood in unlit gloom and men wore their cloaks pulled up to their chins, speaking through the vapour of their own iced breath. No one had been able to make the transanima fires to warm the freeze. A few wolves, unShifted, wandered the shadows, but they were not masters of the magic fire, and the wild ones were contemptuous of man’s need for warmth. In one of the high dormitories and amongst the men of the south, Asved slept, legs twitching, coughing in his dreams, tugging the sealskins around him. He had come with Grimr to kill monsters, and to discover what monsters might do. As a younger son, he needed a reputation. As an ambitious man, he needed men to fear and admire him. As a greedy man he needed riches, and rumour of treasure called to him. But most of all he wanted the education of a monster’s example, of how to rip a man apart, make him scream, and see him suffer as no man thought to suffer before. So though the cold troubled him, Asved slept and dreamed sweet.
Ingmar walked across Asved’s sleeping body, the man he had befriended and heartily disliked. Sleepless, he wandered out into the dark beyond the chamber and its echoes and muffled snores. It was some time since he had led the team of men extinguishing the inexplicable flames which had destroyed the dungeons, melting the ice holes from the deepest caves to the first steps. He took a torch from a sconce and managed to light it with a flint. It spat and fizzled in the damp chill. He did not understand how men had lived here in the relentless cold, or why there were huge hearths in every hall when if fire burned it would melt the ice and destroy the whole castle as it had destroyed below, now sunk amongst the seaweed, fronded in bubbles.
He retraced his way to the lost dungeons. The water slapped against the steps as he climbed down, and the reflections of his torch flares spun in sudden crimson ripples. He stood some time there on the lowest step, water to the toes of his boots, looking towards the hidden horizon. He held the torch higher, seeing a movement far off, a fin, the tail of some distant thing. With a faint hiss, the torch went out, dying in the damp freeze, leaving him in utter blackness. He began to scramble back up the steps. Then he heard the whisperings. There was splashing, like a thousand fish beaching onto pack ice. Voices murmured in a hidden language. Ingmar stood and listened until he was too frightened to stay. He scuttled up to the higher steps, slippery with a slime of aged algae, but, hurrying to return to the company of men he understood, Ingmar’s boots slid. Something grabbed him and with a shriek, he fell.
Thoddun also heard his people, knew his first army had arrived, and smiled. He sent immediate messages to Flokki. Then, with a long cold breath, he began to speed his heartbeat, stood a moment, his feet to the waterfall, and stretched out his arms before him as a man preparing to dive. But it was the orca which entered the falls, twisting its great gleaming bulk down into the dancing spray, a weight so enormous that the bright water parted for him, rebounding in thunder and the force of an exploding berg. The cold currents of the sea close over his back as he disappeared into the terrible darkness. The plunge of the waterfall was behind his tail, his fins flexed, his lungs expanded to the air held within them, his eyes opened black ferocity. The orca swam straight for the ruined depths of his own castle. His sea army waited there for him and he called as he swam. His exhilaration swelled with the incoming tide but his joy in the Shift and the sea-wolf’s power was released only in the tiny silver bubbles trailing behind him as he dived.
Grimr stared down at the boy. He knew exactly what the child was doing, so engrossed that he lay oblivious to his own father standing over him. Grimr was not so far removed from his own youth. He remembered each breathless moment searching, finding within his mind the soft unborn fur of the wolf pup, the silken ears, the curled paws and the closed, puckered eyes. Most human children pleasured themselves during the lonely cold nights, but for the transanima it was a joy unknown to humans, surpassing hurried explorations and the sticky panting of fumbling fingers. Preciously exciting, discovery of the adoration for the other self within raced every pulse. Grimr had nurtured it endlessly, but had found no answering life. No heartbeat answered his calls. Forcing open the small golden eyes, he found them lustreless, and the little curled grey body did not rise to breathe. The sweet innocence, the pure beauty of the puppy and all its blessed endearing enchantment, lay inert. Dead weight beneath his lungs.
He had dreamed so obsessively over many years that the ache remained with him still. Almost from birth he had known he was transanima. With both parents of the werepeople, he had been taught, and had always understood. He had waited for his inner wolf to wake and blink and know him. When it did not, he believed at first that the failure was his own. He immersed himself in the human world and those other things a boy must learn; to fight with the sword and the axe, to wrestle and hunt, to shoot at the target, at moving shadows and at the flight of some miserable bird. Denied the wolf within, he found his own childish value in the eyes of his friends and found a feeble ple
asure in his physical human body. He stretched it and exercised it, but there was no substitute for the shimmering promised wonderland within, dying and denied.
He had feared the same for the boy. He had explained little and had forbidden him to explore his channels, but it was the beginning of Knut’s success he recognised now. Grimr turned abruptly on his heel and left the chamber. He returned to the long low dormitory where his huskarls had dragged in their bedding, sleeping close together in the relentless damp. His favourite’s mattress was empty, the covers strewn. It seemed Ingmar was also restless, and wandering somewhere within the dark corridors. Grimr kicked at Asved’s elbow, and again when the man squeezed shut his eyes and resisted the waking world. “Get up,” Grimr snarled. “Where the fuck’s Ingmar?”
Asved groaned. “How should I know? I was asleep. I want to be asleep.”
The other men around them murmured, tossing and turning their backs to the interruption. “Fuck off Asved. If you can’t sleep, bugger off.”
“I was sleeping,” Asved muttered. “What does it matter about Ingmar? So he’s gone to warm up somewhere. Who cares?”
Grimr frowned. “I need him. Find him for me.” He kicked at another of the jarls. Two clambered up, shaking the hair from their eyes. They slept part armed, now struggled to tug on their boots. “Ingmar,” Grimr repeated. “He’s somewhere in this damned rambling Hel-hole. He didn’t come to my chamber. Find him.”
Asved followed Grimr. He tried to light a torch but his flint would not spark. Another of the stumbling men managed a brief flare, but it guttered quickly. They marched obediently into the darkness. Grimr waved Asved away. “Get below. If you find him, tell him I’m waiting. I want him now.”
Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy Page 68