‘When who is here again?’
‘The god of the runes. The god who is the runes. I know what is in you. It is more than just the howling rune.’
Aelis swallowed. The howling rune. That was as good a name for it as any, the rune that stood apart from the eight others, the one that cried out with the lonely voice of a wolf in the hills. Calling to what? To the thing that had seemed to stalk her in her midnight walks at Loches. The wolf.
‘That is why you and your hideous brother pursue me?’
‘It is why I pursue you. My brother would not understand those motivations. He cannot understand the true nature of the runes, what it means that they are in me, the unshakeable destiny they decree.’
Aelis felt a strong sensation come from the woman, not unlike the one she had felt coming from the merchant with the taste of vinegar and pitch. Deceit. The witch had lied to her brother. But about what?
The woman continued: ‘When the runes are united by death the god will be here, the wolf will kill his brother and fight with the corpse lord. My destiny will be complete as I die under the teeth of the wolf.’
Aelis couldn’t make sense of what she said but the symbols inside her were now in tumult. They jabbered and clanged, moaned and shook. Images came to her — the sheen on a horse’s coat, the flow of water over a slick black rock, the spray making rainbows a waterfall, the sun firing the tops of the clouds, the glowing fields of the Indre Valley, the glimmer of light on a scythe’s edge as it reaps the golden wheat, the bright bushels of corn loaded onto a wagon and the great light of joy in the windows of Saint-Etienne, casting blue pools on the flagstones below, where she knelt asking for salvation and grace. The runes gleamed and shone and she knew it was with the light of God. But what had awakened them?
Something was calling to them, winter to their summer. The same light lit them up in towering columns of shining ice, gleamed off frosted leaves thick with thorns, turned a fall of hail to a silver veil, gleamed on the steaming skin of a white wild ox. These visions too were caused by symbols but not those that lived inside Aelis. These, she knew, belonged to the witch. The discomfort Aelis felt told her very clearly that the runes inside her were screaming to join the ones the witch carried.
Somehow, the witch must die.
It was as if Munin caught her thought. She threw the knife towards Aelis. It clattered at her feet and Aelis picked it up. The knife was a wicked gleaming splinter of steel under the moon. The witch said nothing, the vacant pits of her eyes staring into nothing. Aelis walked towards her and went to drive the knife into her belly. But she hesitated. It was as if her arm was no longer hers to command.
The witch spoke: ‘If it was that easy you would have been dead years ago.’
Aelis summoned up her strength, took the knife in both her hands and tried to stab it into the witch’s neck. But she couldn’t do it. She could sense what was stopping her: the runes, the ones the witch carried. They wouldn’t let her act and yet they wanted to be together. Each set of eight runes, it appeared, wanted the other’s host to die and defended its own.
Aelis threw down the knife in frustration.
‘There may yet be a way,’ said the witch.
At a sound Aelis turned. Moselle and Ofaeti were coming into the cloister, Astarth, Egil and Fastarr behind them. Ofaeti and Moselle carried a long rope between them. Instantly Aelis noticed what was odd about them. They were both unarmed. Neither man would ever forget his weapon in this company, she thought. Where was Moselle’s sword? Where was Ofaeti’s axe?
She ran towards them. ‘This woman is my enemy. Strike her down,’ she said.
Neither man spoke; they just stared at the witch.
Aelis shook Moselle, but he didn’t react. She withdrew her hands. The knight, for some reason, was soaking wet.
55
The Tides
The tide was out but they didn’t sink the stake near the waves. Moselle and Ofaeti drove it in further up the beach though still on the flats, before the sand became lighter and drier. They tied her to the stake in a sitting position. Aelis felt the cold water seeping into her trousers, glanced at the pools by her side and knew she was within the reach of the tide. They intended her to drown — but slowly.
Of course she had struggled, but Ofaeti was terribly strong and he and Moselle had bound her easily. They were enchanted, she could see. Neither spoke nor seemed to focus on what they were doing, and Moselle kept licking his lips, clacking his teeth together and even belching in a way he would never allow himself to do if he had been in possession of his mind.
She remembered Sigfrid and how the rune had manifested inside her to cause his horse to bolt, and she looked inside her now, to try to find something that might break the spell they were under. Nothing came. She could not make the runes hear her. They were occupied with something else — the presence of their sisters in the mind of Munin.
‘I know what you are trying to do,’ said Munin, who stood beside her,’ but such control comes at a high price.’ She gestured to her face. ‘They move in their own way unless you force them, in agony and denial, to move to yours. You will suffer and you will give up what you have to me.’
Aelis looked up at the bright half-moon and called out to the witch, asking why she didn’t just have her slaves kill her there and then, as she had tried to do with her enchantments before. The witch said nothing, but Aelis guessed that had failed. The words of the wolfman came back to her. When she had asked him why Hrafn, as she thought of the male sorcerer, had tried to kill her, he had said, He is afraid of you. So Aelis and the witch were not able to harm each other directly. That was why she would be left for the sea.
The boy led the witch in front of Aelis and she sat down on the wet sand. She was scarcely human to Aelis now, more a shifting vision, something that was there and then gone. The woman’s presence was like a blizzard wind full of grit that forced Aelis to turn her head away.
They waited on the beach. It was a cloudy dawn, the sun only visible as a smudge of lighter sky. Aelis was frozen and her body convulsed in shivers. The witch sang a song about the beginnings of things, and about how they would end. One verse she repeated again and again in her strange, high, piping voice, the notes in no key Aelis had ever heard but strangely beautiful.
I know that I hung on the wind-torn tree,
Hung there for nights full nine;
With the spear I was wounded, and offered I was
To Odin, myself to myself.
On the tree that none may ever know
What root beneath it runs,
None gave me comfort with loaf or drink.
Down I looked
And took up the runes. Shrieking I took them.
From there I fell back.
That day the tide did not reach her and no one tried to move her. She was so cold but her mind was clear. She knew what they intended. She looked up at the moon, the queen of the tides as it was called, still sharp in the blue sky. Her fate was linked to it. She had not been raised near the sea but she knew the water could come higher in some seasons than others. How long would that take? A day, a week?
The kept singing her song and one phrase seemed to stick in Aelis’s mind. Nights full nine.
Aelis prayed to God to save her or to take her to him quickly. Night fell and she fainted away with the cold and was woken by the dawn, the clouds seeming to boil into great white columns and then disperse under the rising sun. Now the sun was strong and, though at first its warmth was welcome, soon Aelis felt sick as her skin crisped under its heat. Her lips were dry and she longed for a drink. Someone brought her a rag soaked in water. They were keeping her alive! Against herself, she sucked at it. Then she fell unconscious, and when she woke it was to a deep field of stars.
The water was lapping at her legs. She looked around her and the whole beach seemed to sway. The song continued, though she could not see the witch. Straining to look behind her, she saw some boots. Ofaeti was still standing there.
&
nbsp; She called out to God and, when that brought no release, to the runes she nurtured inside her. She could hear the symbols and feel their presence, the rush of sensations of light, water, earth and hooves, but they were not there for her. The runes were stretching out, away from her, towards their sisters in the witch. The water covered her legs. Her body convulsed. Then the water was at her waist. She prayed to God, prayed and prayed. But it wasn’t God that sprang to her mind. One rune was not searching for the others; one rune stood apart, that jagged S that lay on its side, a cross-bar through it like a spear through a corpse.
She saw a wolf and a man, and a man who was a wolf, she saw thunderclouds bubbling on the horizon, and she heard a dreadful keening, a terrible note of anguish with the quality of a funeral lamentation, the grief of those whose loved ones had gone too soon. The names of the rune came to her: storm, wolf trap. There was another name, she knew, just on the tip of her tongue. The rune had three names but she could name only two: storm, wolf trap, storm, wolf trap, storm, wolf trap. Then the third name came to her as she thought of the man, the man who was a wolf — werewolf.
A scream came from inside her, more of a howl than any woman’s cry. It was the rune expressing itself in sound, singing out through the human apparatus of lungs, throat and mouth but resonating in another way too, speaking to the mind that neither wakes nor sleeps, speaking to the dark corners of the memory, unearthing childish fears, stirring the wolves that snuffle through dreams and crouch waiting for the midnight waker who dares to move in their bed.
On the beach there was a thump as Ofaeti sat down heavily. The witch stopped her singing.
The water was at Aelis’s chest, the ropes beginning to swell, cutting off the blood to her hands and restricting her breathing. She struggled against the bonds but knew it was no good.
Another howl, this time from the monastery, an answering call to the one that had come from Aelis. The water was at her chin. She tried to push back her head but the stake wouldn’t allow it.
Terror swept over her, blanking her mind. But the runes were within her, lighting the darkness of fear that had fallen upon her, warming her and sustaining her in the cold sea. And then she was somewhere else.
She was high on a bare mountainside overlooking a green land of hills and rivers. Beside her were two men — identical, dark-haired and their skin tanned by the sun. One was a wolf, she knew. Or both were wolves. They didn’t look like wolves but she knew them to be one. The thought struck her as strange. How can two people be one thing?
‘Vali, help me!’ The words spilled from her. ‘Feileg, I am dying.’
‘I will not abandon you.’ The two men spoke together.
‘Help me now!’
‘I will come to you.’ They both spoke again. ‘But do not trust him, not after what he did. He is a killer to his bones.’
She knew the men were referring to each other.
‘Who are you?’
She stared hard at one of them and thought that she recognised him. His face was so familiar. A name came into her mind: Jehan? No, this man stood straight and strong; he was no cripple.
Then she heard the rhyme in her head again but this time it was not sung by the witch. The voice was a child’s. Nine days and nights I hung on that wind-racked tree.
She was falling, down into blackness. The tide at her neck receded, came again but not so far, fell away and away and then over days it crept to return. The sun chased the moon across the sky, rose and fell in a blur. Rhymes split her mind about a wolf called Hate who chased the moon, about a wolf called Treachery who hunted the sun.
Axe age, sword age
Shields will be split
Wind age, wolf age
Before the world’s ruin.
She was screaming, really screaming. The water had gone, come back, gone again, and now it was back about her chest and she felt sure she would drown. The song of the witch was in her ears again. She craned her head to the left. She could see the witch on the beach. She stood bolt upright, as if entranced. Aelis felt tearing and ripping inside her. The runes were trying to get free, trying to go to the witch. She was dying. The song went on and on: Nine days and nights I hung on that wind-racked tree.
The howl came again, like the voice of the night. A sound of splintering. The witch’s song faltered but resumed. Now the howl was stronger, not muted. She strained to see what was happening on the beach. She heard a voice she recognised: ‘Not the lady, not the lady!’
Someone was splashing towards her through the water. ‘I am coming, lady. I am here!’
She took in great mouthfuls of salt water. The runes were going from her, being pulled towards the witch on the beach. She saw them, eight of them, straining towards eight others that surrounded and inhabited the witch.
‘I am dying,’ she said.
But a knife was at her bonds, slicing them away. She didn’t know who pulled her from the water. She had a vision of him as a thing of parts rather than a whole, a shaped beard, a turban, that dark and foreign face. He dragged her from the sea and laid her down on the beach.
Aelis was cold beyond shivering. She looked up. Walking towards her behind the witch was that monster, Hrafn. His wicked crescent sword was drawn and he was coming across the sand at a determined pace.
She felt the exultation of the witch. Aelis, in the certainty of her death, saw deeply. The witch would take her runes; the runes would unite, and the god would be on earth. The wolf — Aelis could hear his keyless howl — would kill his brother, and the god’s chosen destiny of death would be at hand. The wolf whose jaws were red with his brother’s blood would tear down the god and offer him the gift and the knowledge of earthly death. Hrafn, the Raven, was the brother of the wolf and was coming forward to die.
Something was coming towards them, something that ran like an animal, loping and grunting across the sand.
Aelis tried to stand but couldn’t. She had no strength. She lay ready for death, ready for the cut of the sword and whatever came after. The witch, led by the boy, was bending over her; Hrafn was above her, his sword raised. The howl, very close, very loud. It was almost as if she could understand it.
‘Flee me! Flee me!’
Hrafn’s sword descended. For a second there was nothing but then something bumped against Aelis’s arm. She opened her eyes to see the severed head of the witch lying like a gift of the sea in front of her. Hrafn was staring down at her, the silver edge of his sword red with blood, his ruined face trembling as he spoke: ‘My love,’ he said, ‘I have come for you.’
And then the runes came shrieking upon her, the wolf crashed in, and the world went wild.
56
Werewolf
In the penitential cell Jehan’s chest was wet with drool. The odours of the battles on the beach were all he smelled — iron on the breeze, a salt that didn’t come from the sea but from blood. Horses were there, the deep smell of their sweat seeming so strong that it clung to his skin.
He broke free of his bonds, tearing them with his nails, biting them, gulping down mouthfuls of rope, unable to stop the instinct to swallow what he bit. Jehan scrabbled on the floor, rolled and stretched, turning his head round and round as if that might clear his thoughts. He stood but that felt wrong. Instead he crawled on all fours around the cell. Something was happening to his legs. His knees felt very odd, too flexible, as if they could bend the wrong way; the whole geometry of his body seemed unfamiliar and strange. He couldn’t stop stretching his back, which felt too long for his body. His shoulders too seemed wrong, restricted, though large and powerful.
He stroked the thick hair on his arms. His teeth were large, and he ran his tongue back and forth in his mouth, picking out the shape of the canines. It was as if he had a mouth full of boat nails. Jehan put his hand to his brow and ran his fingers through his hair. When he brought his hand down he could smell blood on it. He examined his fingers. They had become long and muscular, the nails talons. He had cut himself just by touching his h
ead.
Jehan was unaccountably hot. He panted and slavered, writhing on the flagstones trying to take their coolness in. His skin crawled on his skull; his cock was hard and he seethed with lust, though he fought to force it from his mind. And he was thirsty, terribly thirsty. When had he last drunk? He couldn’t remember. Days before.
The confessor breathed deeply, trying to find himself in the thought storm. There was a screaming inside him, a sound like that of an animal caught in a trap, of something scraped and scratched, like metal on stone. An aggression he had never known was in him. He laughed.
‘I am such a thing that will tear the enemies of God.’
No, he told himself. He fought for clarity. The truth, when it came to him, was terrible. He had been cursed. Some pagan, perhaps the one who had forced that vile and bloody mass on him, had cursed him, and he was powerless to resist. And God had let this happen to him. Why? Because he had not been holy enough, not tried hard enough, not sacrificed enough of his mind to Jesus.
He came up to a crouch, feeling the strength in his limbs. He could break the door, he knew, splinter it to nothing, but he would not. How long had he been in that cell? The question came into his head and vanished again, meaning nothing to him any more.
The power in him was from the devil and he would not use it. It was a test. His senses sang. His teeth were spikes, sharp and ready and his nails were blades, itching to tear and kill. He stretched and clenched his fingers — they were tense with the desire for murder.
But he would not.
‘I will not be this thing,’ he said out loud, his voice rasping like a rain-swollen door on the flagstones. He prayed: ‘Jesus, hear me now. Jesus, strike me down. Afflict me again, Lord. Blind me and wither my limbs. These hands turn only to evil, these eyes profit me nothing. Return me to the piety of darkness.’
From down on the beach he could hear someone calling.
‘Vali, help me! Feileg, I am dying.’
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