Grimr smiled. “No. If you tell me to trust you, I will. I believe what you tell me now. I remember the den, curled close like this, waiting for father to come back.”
Thoddun shook his head. “That was a time of terror. This is a time of sweetness. Don’t remember the fearful times.”
“But you protected me then,” Grimr whispered. “That was sweet too. When they came, our father and his bitch, you put yourself between them and me. You pushed me behind you. You took it, so that I didn’t.” He paused. “Until you left me, and ran away alone.”
Thoddun’s voice was stern. “Forget the past, and listen to me,” he said. “I don’t channel the wolf, but I can take you running. You must do the rest. Open wolf’s eyes. Breathe wolf breath. Run at my speed and through my paws, and bring your own wolf to life. Coax each sinew, feel the fur grow. Flex your neck muscles and taste the snow on your tongue.”
“I’ve tried that a thousand times,” Grimr sighed. “A thousand by a thousand times. It never works. He doesn’t breathe.”
“I can’t force breath into him,” said Thoddun. “But I can force you to force him. This is where our father was mistaken, and all those before him who invented the rumour. It isn’t copulation that’s needed, not any brutal intimacy of bodily penetration, but true intimacy of mind and caring. We’ve always had that. Don’t fight me, or remember bitterness. Hold to me, and listen.”
And he began to sing, his voice soft and wordless, echoes of distant tides and fingers soothing across tired skin. Grimr closed his eyes.
Grimr had heard the chanting long, long ago when he was a child. Sometimes, in the quiet hours when his parents were gentle in affection, and lying together entwined as man and woman in the den, they had chanted to each other, the arousal of smoky magic that led to the Shift, or to love making between them. Their twin cubs had cuddled close, eyes bright, listening to the promises of transanima understanding and the inspiration of their channels yet to be discovered. He had forgotten, almost, the utter balm and beauty. Now it returned to him with a music not heard for more than twenty years.
Grimr turned aside thoughts of his parents and his childhood and took the melody to wrap around the wolf within, to cradle it and nurse it. The music, which was already the essence of sound, now became colour and scent and touch. It swirled around his head and entered him through ears and nose and mouth, and most of all through his mind. It blew like hot smoke into the place where the wolf lay, and for the first time in all those years, the wolf was touched by power.
The chanting stroked along the curved backbone, caressing its ridges and joints. The rough bristled fur was soothed and lay flat and glossy. The ears, lying limp across the skull, were softened, and their pink silky linings gleamed as if in lamplight. But the nose was dry and not moist, the eyes did not flicker and the stubbled lashes remained dull. The hollowed belly did not rise, nor the chest expand and there was no quiver of movement as the beast lay curled and silent beneath Grimr’s heart.
He sighed, but Thoddun held him, one arm around his brother’s shoulder, the other meeting in the clasp of hands over Grimr’s head, and would not release him.
Then through the chanting and in harmony with the melody, there came the pounding of great paws across the land. Without urgency, without fear, or need, or hunger, there was the glory of simple speed and the delight of the air pouring into the open throat. The beating, racing paws hurtled across the snows, knowing neither tiredness nor pain, each sensation absorbed into the freedom of joy. Where the brittle white freeze cracked and lay thin, the paws’ even balance did not break the ice or slide, the claws spread for friction as the bear ran on. It left behind the winter white and came to the bare hills, striped in melting streams, tumbling down from the peaks. The paws neither hesitated nor slowed but padded over the moraine under a lightning sky. Running, always running, the passage of breath through the heaving lungs, the forcing of life into a vibrant body.
Eventually the music faded and lapsed, but the magic remained in the silence as the echoes of perfume and shade danced between the shadows. Grimr still did not move, gentled by the rhythm of Thoddun’s breath. “Sleep now, deep with your wolf,” Thoddun commanded him. “There is no place yet for disappointment. A sleeping channel needs more than one waking call. I can enter the dreams of some transanima, and of some humans. Sleep now, and open your dreams to me.”
Grimr blinked, stretching a little. He murmured, “Can I sleep? There is an itch so hard inside.”
“It’s the urge to Shift,” said Thoddun softly. “Do not deny it. Don’t push it away, don’t scratch. If allowed to swell, the itch can transform into strength. Drown in it, let it carry you, let it become you.”
Grimr pulled his head away to one side and moaned a little, still entranced. “But it isn’t a pleasure, it’s only pain. It grips and cramps. Must I give myself up to pain?”
“Pain has been your master for long years,” Thoddun answered him. “You taught yourself to worship pain. If it claims you now, then welcome it.”
Grimr opened his eyes. They were blood rimmed, the hard grey striped in crimson. “So much pain? Must it only mean my death?”
Thoddun leaned over, and removing one hand from his brother’s brow, took the little candle from where he had set it on the floor beside the bed, and holding it in its tiny iron bowl, brought it to Grimr’s eyes. Grimr blinked but did not look away. He stared at the light. “Look into the heart of the flame,” Thoddun said. “It has a blue sheen, almost unmoving, but deep within it is utterly colourless. Look through it, where the colour disappears. Now you will see only what I tell you to see, and when I command, you will be released immediately into sleep.” Grimr sighed, murmuring. “You will make no more sound,” Thoddun ordered. “You do not belong to yourself. Relinquish control. I will guide you. But you do not give yourself to me. You belong only to the wolf within. It is him who must take control, and to him you must be subservient. Now release your will into the heart of the candle. The place where there is no heat and no light and no colour will absorb your will and hold it steady for you until you need it again. I will give it back to you when this is done. For now, give your mind to the cold fire.”
Grimr’s eyes fixed on the heart of the candlelight. Thoddun’s voice murmured in the rhythm of the chanting. “Now the empty space in the light is filled with green. It is the green of life. It is spring growth and all the power of nature in the season of Beginnings. Deep under the trees, the push of leaf pulses from the earth, surging through the damp mulch of past seasons, reaching for the air and the sunlight. The bare branches start to bud above the bark. Each twig breathes with sap. The buds uncurl, like the cub within the womb. They open, seeping greenery into the forest gloom. There’s birdsong and a sudden shaft of sun through the branches. The new born greens turn gold. Beneath the shading overhang of an oak, amongst the fallen acorns in a soft bed of old moss, a wolf cub is curled. Its eyes are closed. It has not moved for a long time, because it is waiting. It is fast asleep, dreaming of love and yearning for protection. It will not wake for pain. It is waiting for the breath of magic to give it life.
“You are that breath. You must kiss its eyes, and watch them flicker. The lids are heavy, but they soften. The lashes quiver. Lick them, your tongue long and wet and soft across the fringe. Move down to the nostrils. They’re closed and dry. Kiss them open, give them the sap of your own moisture. Now breathe your own breath into the nostrils. Keep breathing. Do not blow or push. You cannot resurrect any timid creature with impatience. Give him your slow warm breath. Give him your belief. Give him your life.
“Open the cub’s mouth with your own lips. Breathe directly into his lungs. Expand his ribs. Rub your face against his fur. It will seem softer than spun wool and gleam more subtly than silk. Put your arms around his small body and feel his first gasp.
“He is Grimr too, but he is the sweetness of Grimr, and the gentle part. Learn love, little brother, and give it all to him.”
Gr
imr was smiling gently as he fell asleep. Thoddun watched him a moment, then blew out the candle. He leaned back against the pillows, took a very deep breath, closed his eyes, and prepared to enter his brother’s dream. He did not expect to enjoy the dreams his brother wove, for he knew a great deal of Grimr’s mind. But usually he could enter transanima sleep wanderings, and with one particular human, as a pale shadow glimpsing only vague impressions while leaving the traces of messages, and a just little of his influence. So he did not expect to enjoy Grimr’s sleeping mind but nor did he expect it to mark him or stain him. He calmed his heart beat, slowing it as he did when returning from the Shift, and again put both hands to Grimr’s head. The smell of the rotting corpse attacked him at once. He gagged, breathed deep and stepped quickly in.
It was more vivid than he had expected, and more intense than he might have wished. Grimr dreamed, as he had been directed, of his wolf. The cub lay curled tight. Grimr’s dream had given it an aura, like moonshine, a pearly gleam of magical adoration. Grimr’s hand lay over it, protecting it. But beneath the hand and beneath the aura, the cub was quite dead. It had begun to decay. The stench rose like smoke, spirals of black steam rising against the man’s heart above, and turning it all to soot.
Thoddun took Grimr’s dream hand, holding it tightly. Then he bent over the small shrunken cub’s body, and put his other hand to it. It made him sick. It had rotted for too long and the soft tissues inside leaked foul through its mouth and anus. A black squelch lay under it, squirming with worms. Thoddun pulled up the little dry eyelids. Inside the eyes had been eaten away.
Thoddun moved back and removed himself at once from the dream. Then he took his brother fully into his arms, and rocked him gently and sang to him.
In the vast cold night far beyond the castle walls, the transanima army roused from their camp. The wind was just a ruffle through the snow, scattering the ashes of the guttering flames. Though there had been little shelter the evening before, they had built huge fires and roasted the last supplies of meat they carried. They had baked black blood bread in the embers and set cauldrons of berry juice with porridge grains to thicken and simmer. They had sat a long time, great laughing groups of them, around the fires to eat and talk, without consideration for the coming battle, and only for the enjoyment of each companionable moment. Lodver had laughed, which was not something he did very often. “If those wretched humans smell this up at the castle, they’ll be mad with hunger.”
The camp was not quite close enough for the perfumes to travel and linger on the cold air, but it was not so far. “We’ll be there by sun up,” nodded Wenden, who had Shifted back to man for the pleasures of the feast and to sleep under the tent.
“And if we get there quicker than the sun rises, we’ll slow down anyway,” said Halfdan. “We need to make a show of arriving when these fucking humans can see us.”
“What about massing first, spreading out to look as intimidating as possible?” suggested Karr. “We prepare, waiting in the dark. Then up comes the sun. And there we are.”
They looked to Skarga but she smiled and shook her head. Thoddun had told her long ago she wasn’t to give orders and anyway, she hadn’t the slightest idea. She was more interested in the roast pork in her bowl. She nibbled at the sides of crackling because it was too hot to pick up. “I think whatever we do,” she said, “will be – most impressive. The people in the castle will be far more than just intimidated, I promise.”
“And the lord said sunup,” nodded Lodver. “So we wait for the sun.”
They set up a tent for her, a flap of oiled sailcloth pegged deep into the ice with one of the sleds at the back. There was her own welter of bedding inside, and although the wind flurries whined and crept beneath the tent’s sides making it flap and shiver, she stayed quite warm within. But she discovered sleeplessness again, thinking first of Thoddun and of what Grimr might have done to him. She imagined him beaten or tortured, imprisoned and frozen. Surely even Thoddun could be frozen by extremes. But she did not imagine him killed, for that was unthinkable.
No answering cord of thought came back to her. She wished desperately that she was transanima and could mind-call, could send him her love and hear the answering desire. But into the silence she told him she adored him and hoped that somewhere he would hear her. Then she thought of Banke and her father and her other brothers, and without any power to hear their thoughts, she knew their fear and anger, and she knew that Banke would be half dead, wrapped like a parcel of useless tinder and bound tight in the prisoners’ sled. She had not gone to him during the feast, but she had asked that someone take the four humans hot food and sufficient blankets. The first man she asked had frowned. He had obeyed reluctantly, accepting both the word of his queen and the severe gleam in Lodver’s watchful eyes. But after that, Skarga had told her wishes only to Egil and Erik. “I don’t want to see Banke,” she’d told them. “He’ll blubber and plead. I’ve no intention of setting him free, so it’ll hurt me and it’ll hurt him, so what’s the point?”
“Won’t hurt me,” grinned Egil. “Tell me to go and kick him and spit in his face. I’ll gladly oblige.” But she had simply arranged for the boys check on the humans, make sure they were given enough food, that their bindings didn’t cut their wrists or stop them eating, and that they were covered and warm. She then acknowledged utter cowardice, and retired to her snug little tent.
When she woke she realised that she had slept after all, but the huge echoing silence around her meant it was still night and the camp had not yet roused. She turned over, tugging her covers with her, and felt the sharp chill at her back where the furs had parted with the wadmal beneath. She struggled up and tried to rearrange her bed. The darkness seemed greater than usual and having entwined herself in knots with her feet sticking out in the open, she kicked everything off and bent to tug on her boots.
She heard the soft hooting perplexity of an owl and wondered if Erik had gone out to hunt. She sat a moment, considering. Then she swore softly to herself, got up and wandered slowly out into the snow.
The camp slept but there was quiet movement with men trudging off to the midden or returning from the Shift. The dying fires were glittering monsters under the cold stars. Coppery hot ashes spat and steamed. There were many tents, some small, others enormous. The sounds of snorting, snoring and grumbling heaved in unison from beneath each stretch of sailcloth. The wind whispered. The crunch of feet through snow was spasmodic. Skarga kept walking. She didn’t know where she was going and soon realised she did not know her way back. Her tent was banked against a sled, and near to a spread of fire but there were a hundred tents and at least twenty fires. Clouds hid the moon and the stars were shy. The fire shadows distorted more than they revealed. She stood a moment, looking up into the openness, but her thoughts were lost in infinity. Then she was at the edge of the camp and there was nothing beyond, her sight unable to penetrate further. She turned to hurry again amongst the living.
Banke grabbed her from behind, his arms right around her, crushing her ribs, one hand thrust clammy across her mouth. Her feet left the ground as he threw her face down, himself on top. Her mouth was stuffed with snow and she could not breathe.
Skarga gasped and bit hard on the finger between her teeth. Her jaws clenched in fury and Banke withdrew his hand with a muffled curse, fisted his fingers and punched fiercely at the side of her face. She tried to pull up her knees beneath her, struggling for leverage, but someone else’s fingers twisted into her hair, her head was wrenched up, her eyes blinded by snow and grit, and something hissed at her. She recognised the archer’s blunt voice. “Fucking bitch. We’ll make you sorry you swived with monsters and betrayed your own kind.”
“We’ll make you sorry you were ever born,” snarled Banke.
“Whore,” grunted Ollaf the archer, fistfuls of her hair still gripped in his stumpy chewed palms.
Most of her life she had fought against her brothers, and most of her life she had lost the battle. Now she
had new skills, and, with a deep breath and a mouthful of dirty snow, she kicked and flung out both arms, searching for something to scratch or something to punch. She achieved both, heard the angry reactions, and tried harder. But then she felt the weight of two huge boots thump on her back, pressing her down. Her head throbbed, her lungs crushed breathless within her chest. She heard her own ribs crack. Someone was stamping on her. Her face was thrown back down into the snow and the toe of a large boot kicked hard into her ear.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Climbing out from the dream, Thoddun left the dead wolf cub curled deep behind Grimr’s heart. But Grimr’s mind was sticky as mud after the autumn rains and the boggy, sucking trails pulled Thoddun back down. With his hands still on Grimr’s brow, his brother’s mind lay constantly open to him.
Thoddun embraced the unconscious body loosely, still singing the gentle echoes of the chant. Like the last ripples spinning out from the dive, the fading music now held a diminishing magic but the rhythm continued to calm and soothe them both. Thoddun sighed, leaning back. The smell of decay and loss remained strong. He had become accustomed, but tiredness weakened his power. He closed his eyes and saw Skarga at once. He smiled, at first unsurprised to discover her familiarity in the first tread of dream. Then he stepped away.
She wore a boy’s clothes, Knut’s perhaps, since they were grand with reinforced seams and a silk tunic. Clearly this was some time before he had truly known her. She was wary, poised to run, expecting violence. Beneath a drab cloud smeared sky and guarded by a high haunched wolfhound, she stood by the hall where Thoddun had grown and known boyhood in the lands of his father. In the dream Skarga was frightened, for she was being taught to obey. This was not Thoddun’s memory, but Grimr’s.
Thoddun stayed. For a few moments of irresistible temptation he watched as Skarga began her archery practise. She flinched as Grimr put his hands on her, adjusting her position, straightening her arm into a more accurate aim. Thoddun read Grimr’s awareness of her fear, and his pleasure. Seeing Skarga only through his brother’s mind, Thoddun could not enter her thoughts. It was a time that no longer existed, and the woman of that time no longer existed. It was Grimr’s memory that trapped him and Thoddun travelled there, unable and momentarily unwilling to spring free. Then it became too dark. His wandering awareness was an invasion, not of Grimr’s thoughts into which he had been invited and where he did not care about intrusion, but into Skarga’s past. He had read Skarga’s mind many times and knew her past terrors, but in his brother’s dreams the past was spread more loathsome still. He saw Grimr’s intimate desires, his intention to injure and torture her, his careful manipulation, his anticipation of calculated misery and inevitable pain. He saw Skarga dragged to Grimr’s bed and heard her cry. He saw her body stripped and the reaching of Grimr’s long fingers. Thoddun abruptly thrust his thoughts into the future, and escaped.
Stars and a Wind- The Complete Trilogy Page 73