The Skrayling Tree: The Albino in America

by Michael Moorcock

  The stink grew worse, but since it was the only air to breathe, we breathed it. With every breath, I filled my lungs with the dust of death.

  And then we were in Nifelheim.

  Leif the Shorter, from somewhere in the middle of the ship, cried out in frustration. “I should not be here. I have done nothing wrong. I killed my share. Is it my fault that I should be punished simply because I did not die in battle?”

  I wrapped my sea-cloak more closely about me. It had become profoundly cold. The icy air was hard against my skin, threatening to strip it off. Breathing became painful. I felt I inhaled a thousand shards of glass.

  There was no wind—just cold, pitch darkness, utter silence. I heard the sound of our oars dipping and rising, dipping and rising with almost unnatural regularity. A brand flared suddenly. I saw Gunnar’s glittering mask, illuminated by the rush torch. I caught a faint impression of the rowers as he came back up the central board. “Where are we, Prince Elric? Do you know? Is this Nifelheim?”

  “It might as well be,” I said. The deck then slanted again, and we ran downwards for a short while before righting ourselves.

  As soon as we were back into still water, the oars began to dip and rise, dip and rise. All around us was the sound of running water, like glaciers melting—a thousand rivers running from both sides of the narrow watercourse on which we now rowed.

  Gunnar was jubilant. “Hel’s rivers!”

  The rest of us did not respond to his joy. We became aware of deep, despairing groans which were not quite human, of bubbling noises which might have been the last moments of drowning children. There was clashing and sibilant shushing, which could have been the sound of whispering voices. We concentrated on the dip and rise, dip and rise of our oars. This familiar slap was our only hold on logic as our senses screamed to escape.

  Leif the Shorter’s rasp came again. He was raving. “Elivagar, the Leipter and the Slid,” he shouted. “Can you all hear them? They are the rivers of Nifelheim. The river of glaciers, the river of oaths, the river of naked swords. Can’t you hear them? We are abandoned in the Underworld. That is the sound of Hvergelmir, the great cauldron, boiling eternally, dragging ships whole into her maw.” He began to mumble something about wishing he had been braver and more reckless in his youth and how he hoped this death counted as a violent one. How he had never been a religious man but had done his best to follow the rules. Again he wailed that it was scarcely his fault he had not been killed in battle. Leif the Larger economically silenced his cousin. Yet even Leif the Shorter’s wailings had not interrupted the steady rise and fall of our oars. Every man aboard clung to this effortful repetition, hoping it would somehow redeem him in the eyes of Fate and allow him entry into Paradise.

  Now imploring voices called out to us. We heard the sound of hands on the sides of the ship, attempts to grasp our oars. Yet still the men rowed on at the same pace, Gunnar’s voice rising over all the other sounds as he called out the rhythm. His voice was aggressive and bold and commanded absolute obedience.

  Down dipped the oars and up again they rose. Gunnar cursed the darkness and defied the Queen of the Dead. “Know this, Lady Hel, that I am already dead. I live neither in Nifelheim nor in Valhalla. I die again and again, for I am Gunnar the Doomed. I have already been to the brink of oblivion and know my fate. You cannot frighten me, Hel, for I have more to fear than thee! When I die, life and death die with me!” His defiant laughter echoed through those bleak halls. And if, somewhere, there was a pale goddess whose knife was called Greed and whose dish was named Hunger, she heard that laughter and would think Ragnarok had come, that the Horn of Fate had blown and summoned the end of the world. It would not occur to her that a mere man voiced that laughter. Courage of Gunnar’s order was rewarded in Valhalla, not Nifelheim.

  Gunnar’s defiance further heartened his men. We heard no more of Leif the Shorter’s discovery of religion.

  The sound of clashing metal grew louder, as if in response to Gunnar. The human voices became more coherent. They formed words, but in a language none of us knew. From out of that chilled darkness there emerged other, less easily identified sounds, including a gasping, bubbling, sucking noise like an old woman’s death rattle. Yet still The Swan rowed on, straight and steady, to Gunnar’s beating fist and rhythmic song.

  Then he stopped singing.

  A great silence fell again, save for the steady thrust of the oars. We felt a tug at the ship as if a great hand had seized it from below and was lifting it upward. A howling voice. A whirlwind. Yet we were being dragged into rather than out of the water.

  I gasped as salt filled my mouth. I clung to whatever rigging I could find in the darkness while behind me Gunnar’s laughter roared. He began to sing again as it seemed that he steered us directly into the drowning current. The ship creaked and complained as I had never heard before. She tilted violently, and at last the rhythm of her oars no longer matched the rhythm of Gunnar’s song.

  There was a tearing sound. I was convinced we were breaking up. Then came a great thrumming chord, as if the strings of an instrument had been struck. The chord consumed me, set every nerve singing to its tune and lifted me, as it lifted the entire ship, until we were driving upwards as rapidly as we had gone down. A white, blinding light dominated the horizon. My lungs filled entirely with water. I knew that I had failed in my quest, that in a few moments my only grasp on life was what was left to me as I hung in Jagreen Lern’s rigging.

  The ship began to yaw and spin in the water until I lost what little sense of direction I had. Suddenly the light faded to a pale grey. The noise became a steady shout, and again I heard Gunnar’s laughter as he bawled to his men to return to their oars. “Row, lads. Hel’s not far behind!”

  And row they did, with the same extraordinary precision, their muscles bulging to bursting from the effort of it, while Gunnar lifted his gleaming helm towards heaven and pointed. Here was proof that we had left the supernatural world.

  The bright light faded. Above us was a grey, darkening sky. Behind us some kind of maelstrom danced and sucked, but we had escaped it and were even now rowing steadily away from it.

  Ahead of us lay a high, wooded coastline with a number of small islands standing off it. The cloud cover was heavy, but from the nature of the light sunset was not far off.

  The sounds of the maelstrom fell away. I wondered at the extraordinary sorcery it had taken to achieve such a strange transition. Gunnar presented the coast to me with a proprietorial hand.

  “Behold,” he said with sardonic triumph, “the lost continent of Vinland!” He leaned forward, drinking it in. “The Greeks called it Atlantis and the Romans called it Thule. All races have their own name for it. Many have died seeking it. Few ever made the pacts I made to get here…”

  A mist was rising. The coast vanished into it, as if the gods had grown tired of Gunnar’s posturings. As we slowed oars and came in on a long, cold surf, we began to make out the darkening outlines of a fir-crowded coast edged by dark rock and small, unwelcoming beaches. Gunnar steered us between rocky, fir-clad islands as if he knew where he wanted to go. By the nature of the waves we had entered a bay and must be nearing a mooring of some sort, but there were still many small islands to negotiate.

  I began to smell the land. It was rich with pine and ferny undergrowth, verdant with life. Gunnar’s sense of that had been right, at least.

  Asolingas saw the house first. He pointed and yelled to get Gunnar’s attention.

  Gunnar cursed loudly. “I’ll swear to you, Elric—and I paid heavily in gold and souls for this information—I was told Vinland held nothing but savages.”

  “Who says they are not?” After all these years I was still confused by the fine distinctions.

  “That manor could have been built in Norway last week! These aren’t like the wretches we dealt with in Greenland.” Gunnar was furious. “Leif’s damned colonies were supposed to have perished! And now we’re sailing into a port that probably has a dozen Vi
king ships in it and knows exactly what we’re here for!”

  He gave the order to back water and up oars. We drifted close in to the island and the house. The lower windows were already lit against the twilight and cast a mottled pattern on the surrounding shrubs. These windows were typically of lightly woven branches which admitted light and afforded privacy during the day but could be covered against the night. I wondered if the place was some sort of inn. There was thin smoke rising from its chimneys. It looked a good solid place, of big oak beams and white daub, such as any rich peasant might build from Normandy to Norway. If it was a little taller, perhaps a little more circular in shape than average, that was probably explained by local materials and conditions.

  The manor’s existence, of course, suggested exactly what Gunnar feared—that the Ericsson colonies had not only survived but prospered and produced an independent culture as typically Scandinavian as Iceland’s. A house of these proportions and materials meant something else to Gunnar. It meant there were stone fortifications and sophisticated defenses. It meant fierce men who were conditioned to fighting the native skraylings and had a code of honor which demanded they die in battle. It meant that one ship, even ours, could not take the harbor, let alone the continent.

  I was not, of course, disappointed. I had no quarrel with this folk and no eye on their possessions. Gunnar, however, had been promised a kingdom only to discover that apparently it already had a king.

  As we passed the house we looked in vain for the city which we now expected to see. The shoreline was virgin woodland or harsh, pebble beach, with occasional slabs of rock rising up directly from the water. When night at last fell it was very clear there was no thriving harbor nearby. Gunnar was careful. He did not relax his guard. There were a dozen headlands which could be hiding a fair-sized fortified town. His position as a leader was threatened. He had promised an abandoned city of gold, not a city of stone crammed with warriors. The politics of our ship were beginning to shift radically.

  The only light gleaming through all that watery, pine-drenched darkness was from the house on the island. At least we were not immediately threatened. If challenged, Gunnar would greet the Vikings as a brother, I knew. He would bide his time, search for their weaknesses, while he praised and flattered and told exotic stories.

  Gunnar sighed with relief. He gave the order to row towards the island. I found myself hoping that the inhabitants were capable of defending themselves. Just as we began to look for an anchoring place, the lights in the house went out.

  I looked up at the stars. They were far more familiar in their configuration than those I had most recently left behind. Had I somehow returned to the world of Melniboné? Instinctively I felt that my dreams and my realities had never been closer.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Klosterheim

  Famous in fierce foam the reivers raged,

  Swords bared against their barren fortune.

  LONGFELLOW,

  “Lord of the Lost”

  A part from the lamp which burned in the front windows, there was no evidence that the house was occupied at all. Our men were by now totally exhausted. Gunnar knew this and told them to stop rowing. The Persian was sent forward with the plumb line. The water seemed shallow enough, but when we dropped anchor it would not hold. We were touching rock. The big millstone we used was slipping. Eventually we were able to get some sort of purchase in what was probably organic tangle. The ship drifted about before settling slowly with her dragon bird prow staring imperiously inward at the mysterious continent. Had Gunnar really thought it could be taken by thirty men commanded by a faceless madman?

  I had no need of sleep the way the others had. I told them I would take first watch. I spent it in the little buckskin shelter we had made in the prow, which gave me a view of the water ahead. I heard what I thought were seals and checked the ship for swimmers. By the time my watch was up the night had been uneventful.

  When I awoke just after dawn I heard birdsong, smelled wood smoke and forest and was filled with a sense of quite inappropriate well-being. From within the house, some sort of animal croaked, and I heard a human voice that was faintly familiar to me.

  We drew anchor and rowed slowly around the island looking for a better landing place. Eventually we found a slab of rock jutting directly into the sea. A lightly clad man could stand on the rock and wade up easily to get a rope positioned for the rest of us. We would drown in our war-gear if we slipped.

  At length, having left a small guard, we stood on the bank of the island. Out to sea, gulls and gannets fished on grey, white-flecked water. They flew low against a sky of windswept iron, with tall firs and mixed woodlands rising inland as far as we could see. Nowhere, save from the house, was there any smoke.

  With a habitual curse, Gunnar began to march forward through the undergrowth leading his men. We were approaching the back of the house. There was no sign we had been detected until, as we came close, a bird inside began to screech in the most urgent and agitated manner. Then there was silence.

  Gunnar stopped.

  The Viking led us in a wide circle until we could see the front of the house with its solid oaken door, heavy iron hinges and locks, the bars at the windows in front of the lattice. A well-maintained and defendable manor house.

  Again the bird made a noise.

  Were they hoping we would go away?

  Were they expecting us to attack?

  Gunnar next told half the party to stay with me at the front while he circled the house. He was looking for something in particular now, I could tell. He murmured under his breath and counted something off on his fingers. He had recognized the place and feared it.

  Certainly his manner changed radically. He yelled for us to get back, to get down to the ship immediately.

  His men were used to obeying him. Their own superstition did the rest. Within seconds they were all stumbling back through the undergrowth, catching their hasty feet and cursing, using their swords to hack their way clear, thoroughly infected by their master’s panic.

  And panic it was! Gunnar was clearly terrified.

  I would have followed had not the door opened and a rather gaunt, black-clad individual whom I did not recall greeted me with cold familiarity.

  “Good morning, Prince Elric. Perhaps you’d take a little breakfast with me?”

  He spoke High Melnibonéan, though he was a human. His face was almost fleshless, a cadaverous skull. His eyes were set so deep in their sockets it seemed a vacuum regarded you. His thin, pale lips forced a partial smile as he saw my surprise.

  “I think my former master, Lord Gunnar, knows the nature of this place, but do not fear, my lord. It cannot do you harm. You do not recall me? I understand. You lead so many and such varied lives. You meet people far more remarkable than myself. You don’t remember Johannes Klosterheim? I have been waiting here for Earl Gunnar to arrive for some fifty years. We were once partners in sorcery. My own satanic powers are used elsewhere. But here I am.”

  “This house was brought here by sorcery?” I asked.

  “No, sir. The house was built by my own and others’ honest sweat. Only the stone posts were already in place. We erected the beams, the walls and floors. Each corner of the house is stone, as are many of the interior supports. We found the circle already here when I arrived.”

  “We? You and your pet?”

  “I must apologize for the bird, sir. My only protection against the savages. But I was not referring to him. No, sir, I am lucky enough to be chief of a small tribe of native skraylings. Travelers like myself. We found this land already settled. It was the settlers helped me build my house.”

  “We saw no other lights, sir. Where would those settlers be?”

  “Sadly, sir, they are all dead. Of old age. We fell out, I fear, myself and the Norsemen. My tribe triumphed. Apart from the women and children adopted to make up our numbers, the rest are now enjoying the rewards of Valhalla.” He uttered a barking caw. “All mongrels now, eh,
sir?”

  “So settlers built this place for you?”

  “They did most of the necessary work, yes. It’s essentially circular, like their own houses. The island itself was a holy place locally. The natives were frightened of it when we arrived. I knew it would be a long while before you got here, so I needed somewhere comfortable to wait. But my tribesmen will not live here. A few remain with me but make their own camp in the mountains over on the other side of that ridge.” He pointed inland at a distant, pine-covered terrace. “They bring me my food and my fuel. I am, these days, a kind of household god. Not very important, but worth placating. They’ve waited years, I suspect, for a more suitable Easterner. Gunnar could well be what they want, if he does not kill them before they have a chance to talk. You had better take me to him. I place myself under your protection, Prince Elric.”

  Without locking the house, Johannes Klosterheim closed his front door, left his jabbering bird inside and followed me. Some Vikings had already reached the gang-rope. The Swan rocked and bobbed under the weight as they pulled on the rope, hauling themselves through the water and up the side.

  “Earl Gunnar,” I called. “The master of the house is with me. He says he means us no harm. He can explain these paradoxes.”

  Gunnar was still half-panicked, raving. “Paradoxes? What paradoxes? There are no paradoxes here, merely dark danger. I will not risk my men’s lives against it.”

  His men paused. They were not as impressed or terrified as he was. Gunnar gathered himself. He spoke with a slightly forced authority. He could not afford to show any further failures of judgment, or he would not last long.

  “The master of the house is captured?”