A Fire in the North

by David Bilsborough

  Nibulus explored it with them step by step. There was a hollow tone to his voice, a tired flatness and a distinct lack of euphony this time as he spoke. He had already done his private mourning for his friend, and there was no real grief left inside him. Just sickness, confusion and an overwhelming desire to have done with this campaign once and for all, the worst he had ever been part of in his life.

  ‘Xilva,’ he began, ‘having already been wounded by the wolf pack, took a fall into a pit in the mountains. But what came out? What can recover in days from wounds such as those he received from the wolves and the fall?’

  ‘And to come after us all that way on his own,’ Finwald continued. ‘I ask you, what manner of man or devil are we talking about here?’

  Nibulus was becoming increasingly agitated but this was a situation that for once he could not solve simply by an outburst of anger. In exasperation he repeated his question: ‘So, what did come out of the valley then?’

  ‘Not Methuselech Xilvafloese, that’s for sure,’ Bolldhe stated bluntly.

  ‘Then can anyone here tell me what kind of creature or spirit could resemble our friend so closely?’ Nibulus enquired.

  ‘Maybe it was an Abyssian,’ Wodeman suggested, his voice barely more than a whisper.

  ‘Aye, an Abyssian,’ Paulus agreed. ‘Such deceit as this would as like as not derive from that filthy breed of huldre! Well known are they in my land. They incarcerate our people in their unholy cells and then take on their semblance. Then they walk among us, talk among us, eating, drinking, sharing our lives, sharing our wives, and all the time laughing at us!’

  ‘For how long can they do this?’ Gapp asked, shivering.

  ‘And why?’ demanded Nibulus.

  ‘Why?’ Paulus repeated, surprised at the question. ‘Why does any huldre do anything it does? And as for how long, well, for just however long they want. Who can tell? We are only able to see them for what they truly are when they want us to. Never before. Perhaps they eventually tire of their sick sport and return to their realm to gloat with their kind.’

  ‘And the people they mimic?’ Nibulus asked. ‘After the Abyssian has returned to huldre-home?’

  ‘They are then released from its thrall,’ Paulus admitted, fiddling with the knotted tubes of his gall bladder. ‘Some simply spring from the tree bole or boulder where they have been held, and they remember nothing of their imprisonment. But by then of course they have a lot of explaining to do, a lot to answer for, as the huldre has sown pernicious mischief into the framework of their life.’

  Gapp, interesting though this all was, tried to cut in: ‘I don’t think he was a shapechanger. As I’ve already said—’

  ‘What you said,’ Nibulus persisted, ‘is that he behaved differently to before. Paulus, what do you know of these Abyssians’ art, their performance and their guile? Do they attempt to closely impersonate the characteristics of those they supplant too?’

  ‘They try to resemble them in every way they can,’ Paulus explained. ‘They even do so when they take on the guise of an animal.’

  ‘They do that too?’

  ‘Indeed,’ Wodeman confirmed, with a nod at Paulus. ‘I myself have known such cases in Nordwas. Usually they masquerade as farm animals. Some seem to enjoy being ridden, others have a yen for being milked. Or they may pretend to be the household dog – you know, getting in really close with the family but without the extra bother of having to pass themselves off as a human.’

  ‘And is there some way you can tell it’s not really your own dog at all?’

  ‘Well, the Abyssian will attempt to mimic the one it has ousted in every way,’ Wodeman explained. ‘Such a false dog, for example, might continue to torment cats, gnaw on bones, roll on dead things—’

  ‘Greet women from behind,’ added Paulus with distaste.

  ‘Exactly,’ Wodeman continued. ‘All those practices the huldre take such pleasure from in their true form. But no matter what they become, their spirit remains huldre, so if observed for long enough certain discrepancies may be noticed. In the case of a dog then, though they would never do anything a dog wouldn’t do, like read a book or use a latrine, it may be noticed that certain things dogs do, the changeling doesn’t.’

  ‘Such as?’

  Wodeman scratched his head. ‘Well . . . I suppose you’d never see them licking their privy parts or anything like that.’

  ‘Really?’ Nibulus replied. ‘That’s the first thing I’d want to do.’

  ‘Listen to me!’ Gapp interrupted. ‘He wasn’t a blooding shapechanger, all right? He behaved nothing like Xilva, I’m telling you.’

  ‘Why, what was he like then?’

  ‘You all know what he was like back then. He was . . . I don’t know, joyous, I suppose, and full of life. Always a bit of a laugh. But when I met him again afterwards, well, he probably didn’t even know what laughter was. He was so serious all the time, so intense – so obsessed. And very, very strange too. He hardly spoke to me at all, and when he did . . . well, I was so confused, so drained, I hardly took any of it in. But there was one thing he kept going on about: justice. He seemed obsessed with justice.’

  ‘Justice?’ Finwald repeated. ‘For whom?’

  ‘I couldn’t make head nor tail of it, but it was the need for justice that drove him on so. And he knew things too, things Xilva wouldn’t have known, I’m sure. He spoke Polgrim, and he was fluent in the Wrythe-people’s speech. He knew exactly who the Majestic Head was. He knew things about this land that not even Nibulus knows. And he had power. Such power! He stood on a beach and summoned, compelled that Jagt-thing I told you about. Imagine! And you all saw what he did to that monster.’

  Nibulus’s eyes suddenly lit up. ‘In that case maybe the real Methuselech is still alive after all. Perhaps he’s still back in the mountains, or maybe he recovered enough to make his way to Myst-Hakel or else back to that Torca village.’

  ‘What?’ Bolldhe scoffed, ‘You think he crawled from that terrible pit? Then dragged himself all alone out of the mountains? Don’t be so bloody stupid!’

  ‘Maybe he’s still imprisoned in the Abyssian’s boulder, or tree bole, or wherever else he was put,’ suggested Paulus darkly.

  ‘Will you listen to me!’ Gapp exclaimed. ‘There was no Abyssian. There never was! I saw Methuselech in those eyes occasionally, sometimes heard his voice, his real voice, speaking from within his body. You yourself heard his last war cry, Nibulus. That was truly him! But he wasn’t the only one in there. I’ve got scars here on my wrists from where the other thing drank my blood, just trying to keep Xilva’s body fresh and alive. And by the time we met up with you lot, that body was looking more like one you’d see swinging from a gibbet after a fortnight. I’m sorry, Nibulus, but Methuselech’s dead. His soul may have been in there along with Mauglad’s, but it was Mauglad pulling the strings.’

  Nibulus was finally silent then, and for a while so were the others. Before their very eyes the Peladane appeared to diminish, to almost shrink into himself, and his jaw softened in a way none of them had witnessed before. He had grieved the loss of his good friend once already, and now that his sudden new hope had been crushed by the boy’s words, he must grieve a second time.

  ‘Mauglad?’ It was Finwald who broke the silence.

  Gapp turned to him. He had not mentioned the name earlier and wondered why he had done so now. It was, after all, a name he had only ever come across in his dreams, in the nightmares he had suffered while riding through Fron-Wudu with the Methuselech-thing. But there had been a note in Finwald’s voice as he had uttered that name. A definite note. And now that it came to it, maybe the time had come at last for Finwald to tell them what exactly was going on here.

  ‘Mauglad, yes,’ Gapp responded. ‘Why, Finwald? Friend of yours, is he?’

  Finwald regarded the boy through narrowed eyes. What the frig was that supposed to mean? But like him, he too wanted answers.

  ‘It’s a name I’ve come across in my res
earch, yes,’ Finwald admitted. ‘He was a great power here once, though who or what he was, I don’t know. There simply are no details, only fleeting references. About one who was once great but fell from power, possibly thrown down . . .’

  ‘So what happened to him?’ Nibulus demanded, clearly irritated by the priest knowing something he did not.

  Finwald shook his head. ‘I’ve no idea. I hardly know anything more than you do. I’m theorizing only.’

  Oh really? thought Gapp, scrutinizing the priest’s face.

  ‘All I know is that there are no records of Mauglad’s presence at the siege. The references to him date back to an earlier time and then they simply finish. It’s as if he, or it, vanished without trace.’

  ‘Power struggle between rivals?’ suggested Bolldhe.

  ‘Could be,’ Finwald confirmed. ‘The servants of Olchor have always been aspiring, competitive, jealous and above all resentful. Maybe it was Scathur who brought about this Mauglad’s downfall. Maybe Drauglir himself.’

  ‘You’ve never mentioned any of this before,’ Nibulus said suspiciously.

  ‘No need to. As I said, Mauglad seems to have vanished long before the days of the Fasces. He has nothing to do with our business here – or so I thought.’

  ‘What do you think his enemies did to him then?’

  ‘Exactly what, I can only guess. Slain, expunged, held in perpetual torture – you tell me. In any case, one way or another his soul appears to have found its way into our poor Xilvafloese.’

  Gapp shivered. He had the uncomfortable feeling they were being watched. That freezing gust of wind that had cannoned past him from Methuselech’s expiring corpse to fly on up Lubang-Nagar now came back to him in a flash.

  ‘His soul is then as damned as that of the worst heretic,’ Nibulus seethed. He tried to choke down his feelings before continuing. ‘So this Mauglad gets himself killed somehow, and hundreds of years later his soul ends up inside Xilva? There’s got to be more to it than that.’

  Finwald was deep in thought. He eventually cleared his throat. ‘Mauglad’s soul could have been banished, I suppose. Cast out of the Maw, far far away where it could cause no mischief. For the soul of a former power within Vaagenfjord Maw would not lie easy, and would remain a great danger to all who had abused it.’

  ‘They could have bound him to a task, of course,’ Appa proposed. ‘Something that would have occupied every moment of his time for all eternity.’

  They turned to the old man, who squatted near the lantern, his glassy eyes fixed upon its glow with a faraway look of distraction.

  ‘I have heard of many such stories,’ he continued. ‘A long time ago in the Blighted Heathlands there lived a moonraker who caused much darkness with his evil and foolish ways. Eventually he was captured by the villagers, who drowned him in the very mere upon which he so loved to practise his arts. But his ghost arose and brought down a fearful and continuous unrest upon the villagers who had slain him. It was my own father who eventually had to deal with him . . .’ (At this the assembled audience murmured with impatience, for they felt this was no place to be listening to the old goat’s tall stories. But Finwald waved them to be still and they listened.)

  ‘My father placed a curse on the moonraker’s soul,’ Appa went on, ‘binding it to the task of draining the mere whose moon-reflection it used to rake. It was a hopeless task, of course, for the lake was bottomless and the ghost was allowed only a tea strainer to accomplish its work. But it was compelled, so had no choice but to stick to its task. And thus it continues to this day, the ghost knowing it can never finish, and the villagers untroubled by its hauntings.’

  How much of this tale was true and not merely the ramblings of an old man, none there knew, but it was sufficient to prompt the inevitable wisdom from Bolldhe.

  ‘I’ve heard that story in just about every tavern I’ve ever visited, in one form or another, and I’ve often wondered exactly which one was the evil-doer, the ghost who gave people the odd fright now and again or the holy man who put such a curse upon it.’

  ‘Yes, and what about those villagers?’ Wodeman pointed out. ‘They were murderers.’

  Appa shrugged. ‘I must admit, it does seem overly cruel to make the ghost use a tea strainer,’ he conceded, ‘but, when you think about it, if the lake really is bottomless, it hardly matters what implement is used. In fact, if the ghost is never ever going to empty it, then a tea strainer is actually better than, say, a great big bucket because at least it’s lighter to handle.’

  Finwald was beginning to regret indulging his brother in faith. ‘It really doesn’t matter,’ he said impatiently. ‘The point is, the troublesome spirit was given a task that kept it out of the way eternally. It’s a perpetual banishment of sorts.’

  ‘In my land,’ Paulus cut in, ‘it is said the spirits of murderers must suffer an eternity of being killed and killed again, thus forced to endure the agonies that they inflicted on another with the despair of knowing they must go through it again and again until Time itself dies.’

  ‘Yes, I imagine they would say that in your land,’ Finwald commented. ‘Does anything pleasant ever happen where you come from?’

  ‘That place in the mountains where Xilvafloese fell,’ Paulus went on, ignoring the priest. ‘Where he changed – I think I know its name.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘To the east of the Blue Mountains lie the Polgrim hunting grounds,’ Paulus explained, ‘and it is said by the Polgrim themselves that within the northern reaches of the mountains there lies a valley of great evil and darkness. It is a place that the living never willingly enter, for none even among the great heroes could endure such dread as is in that place. And there dwell the souls of the damned, doomed to languish there forever beyond the reach of the living. They call it the Valley of Sluagh.’

  Bolldhe snorted. It always made him laugh when the Nahovian prattled that way. He was about to accuse him of having made that up on the spot when he remembered that poem Paulus had recited to him just after Methuselech’s fall. This poem, risible though it was, contained within its poorly translated stanzas the same word, Sluagh.

  Maybe Paulus does know something we don’t . . .

  Finwald, also, was slow to dismiss the Nahovian’s words. ‘It makes sense,’ he admitted. ‘If a soul must be banished, best to send it where no living being would dare venture.’

  ‘No living being save one who hasn’t a clue what he’s doing,’ growled Nibulus. ‘One not fully awake, or too sick to stop himself . . .’

  ‘Poor Xilva,’ Finwald mused, ‘he was probably the only living thing ever to be brought into that place. Such a terrible stroke of fortune.’

  ‘But good fortune for Mauglad,’ Wodeman concluded. ‘His chance, after all that time, to being rehoused in a fresh vehicle of flesh, and one already heading back home, as it were.’

  ‘And now he is home, somewhere close around here,’ Appa said quietly. ‘Cuna save us all!’

  ‘But why?’ demanded Nibulus. ‘What’s his purpose?’

  ‘And whose side is he on?’ Finwald wondered.

  ‘Certainly not Scathur’s,’ Gapp insisted. ‘You should have seen the state he was in when I rescued him from the Keep. As he said himself, he’s considered the black sheep and he’s out for justice. And if he can drag Xilva’s crumbling corpse all the way from that Sluagh Valley to here – can you imagine how much that must have hurt? – he’s not going to give up too easily.’

  The assembled company nodded, and pondered at length upon all that had been said. There were so many questions about this whole matter of Methuselech, so many questions and as yet few answers. But there was a feeling in the air that this discussion had gone as far as it could go, at least for the time being, and that it was perhaps time to get on their way.

  Just as they began to rise and prepare themselves, Gapp called them back: ‘Before we go there is just one small matter I’d like to clear up – if I could have your attention for just one minute.
Finwald, I wonder if you could tell us, is this the first time you’ve journeyed to the Maw?’

  The mage-priest stopped dead in his tracks.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ he replied.

  Everyone else stopped too, even the Vetters, who could recognize the tension in his voice.

  Looks like I’ve got your attention then, Gapp thought, and suppressed a grim smile. He had been waiting so long for this moment.

  They were all staring at Finwald now, for he had not yet answered the boy’s question.

  ‘Well, no, I suppose . . .’ Finwald stammered. ‘I mean yes, of course it is.’

  Appa’s eyes narrowed as he stared hard at his fellow Lightbearer. ‘Finwald?’ he prompted.

  Gapp shrugged. ‘Oh all right, it’s just that I’ve remembered some other things Mauglad said to me during our time together. I told you earlier how obsessed he was, didn’t I? Well, he certainly seemed obsessed about one thing: to reach this place before you did, Finwald. Or to intercept you before you arrived.’

  ‘Me?’ Finwald tried to say, but his throat had dried up, and all that came out was a squeak.

  ‘Yes, there was one very odd thing he said back in Cyne-Tregva,’ Gapp continued. ‘That if we didn’t meet up with you in Wrythe we’d just have to do the job ourselves, which meant getting a silver sword made in the town. But then, after we arrived, he seemed to forget about silver swords, or maybe didn’t think it was important any more – and then there was all this stuff about Plan A and Plan B, and Marmennil scales, and . . . I don’t know, but he was obviously changing tack as and when it suited—’

  ‘Boy!’ Nibulus yelled, his voice barging through Gapp’s prattling. ‘Cut to the chase!’

  ‘With or without the sword, he was heading this way anyway. But when I told him Yulfric’s story, he really did become obsessed,’ said Gapp.

  ‘Yulfric’s story?’ Appa asked and studied his brother mage-priest’s aura intensely.

  Though the room was crypt cold, Finwald’s pale face was clammy with sweat.

  ‘Yes, Yulfric the forest giant, remember? You see, Yulfric told me he knew Finwald,’ Gapp informed them. ‘He’d met him a while back, stumbling half-dead through the forest, heading north with a sword. Isn’t that right, Finwald? On some kind of preaching mission to Wrythe, weren’t you?’