A Fire in the North

by David Bilsborough

  He had suffered so much. Not just during the battle, nor within his soul-house. For Bolldhe it had been a whole lifetime of suffering: unloved, alone, a little scrap of nothing that would never be missed, a solitary insect crushed by a cartwheel on the road. Now, here at the end of the universe, so it seemed, and seeing his friends wink out of his world, he was the loneliest atom on the furthest planet of the cosmos.

  And to have that one precious thing ripped from him too . . .

  It was too much, far too much. He looked up at Cuna and shook his head. What did gods know about anything?

  ‘So,’ intoned Time, ‘what of this one? Your greatest servant, even if such was never his intention, will you embrace him to yourself? Or will you grant him as little mercy as you did Uglekort?’

  Cuna lit a final roll-up. He inhaled deeply and breathed out. He was in no hurry.

  ‘Do you think he likes me?’ he asked Time.

  ‘I think he hates you more than anything he has ever known, conceived or dreamt about,’ Time stated.

  ‘And so you ask me whether I should save him.’

  ‘You are Light. And Truth. And Goodness. And Honour.’

  ‘He thinks I’m an idiot. He hates me, has never worshipped me—’

  ‘Lord Cuna,’ Time interrupted.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He’s gone.’

  They turned to where Bolldhe had been standing, and Cuna saw that he was indeed gone. Truly gone. Forever. For while Cuna had been arguing with the Syr, Bolldhe had simply walked through the black door, the last door, the final cell in the passageway of his soul-house. The gateway to oblivion.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh, indeed.’

  Too much suffering. Far too much to ever heal. And that final cruellest blow, that last straw. Bolldhe had known there was a chance he might have been granted a continuation of sorts by the god of Light, a life beyond life, a place at Cuna’s table even. But Bolldhe had chosen extinction rather than be directed. He would have no handouts from him. For, at that point, the only thing left to him was the ability to choose. He would make that choice, not they. It was the one thing left to him.

  The only thing.

  And he had used it.

  Epilogue

  LEADING OUT FROM the straggle of huts and abandoned enclosures that formed the northern outskirts of Wrythe, a narrow track wound its way. Through the last of the trees it stole, uncertainly leaving the dark confines of that decayed settlement, and came out at last onto the wide open space of a headland that jutted into the ocean.

  Here there was no refuge from the stark winds that raked the coastline, no dark sanctuary for pale creatures that prowled in shadows. It was a land of jagged rock wind-chiselled into sharp contorted forms, where tall grasses whipped about in shrill agitation, where scowling black clouds piloted their way across the sky and where, far below, the vast slate-grey mantle of the ocean was fringed white in a commotion of spume.

  Down there, among the battle debris of shattered rock and decaying sea wrack, there came another flurry of white and grey as a legion of gulls descended upon the sea life thrown up onto the strand. Powerful beaks the colour of fire and blood punched through carapace, ripped living flesh apart. It was a battle that would go on as long as the world lasted.

  But there was also a keen tang of salt that was pleasant to the palate, carried on an icy wind that was cleansing to the soul. And, over at the furthest extremity of the headland, what at first appeared to be a cluster of figures upon the promontory, huddled together in sinister converse, up close was revealed to be simply an assemblage of boulders, weathered and ancient, grey-green and shadowed, with just the occasional glint of sunlight to warm the life back into the virulent orange lichen that clung to their surface.

  Set into the north-east side of these boulders, facing out over the wide expanse of water to the distant island of Melhus beyond, was an alcove. In here, among the clumps of moss and coarse grass that nestled between the rocks, was a torch. Or rather the Torch, a Y-shaped frame of wood, roughly man-height, in the likeness of the symbol of Cuna the Lightbringer. To this frame was nailed the crudely fashioned effigy of a man. Of twisted sapling-wood and twined creepers was it made, wrangled into shape by inexpert and ailing hands, and there was something about its style that did not sit well with its natural surroundings. But, for all that, it had remained firm in this place for a very long time. For, many years ago, Appa had set it here.

  Some days after leaving Melhus, the ship of fugitives had reached Wrythe. For those who had never been here before, there was much trepidation as to what they would find. But on arriving, far from the morbid swelling that had been described to them by Gapp, Kuthy and Elfswith, the company found a ‘swept house’. The tumour had finally been suffered to heal now that the poison of Scathur had been drained from it. Wan doll-faces peered out at them listlessly from dark hovels as they entered the town, but eventually lodgings and board had been procured from the reluctant and slightly dazed denizens. Then the remaining bloodstains were finally scoured from the travellers’ aching bodies in the luxury of steaming water.

  For sure, it was a dismal and dreary return to the world of men, and once rest, healing and provisions had been obtained, little time was wasted lingering in that mournful place. The memory, if not the smell, of Scathur and his hideous harem still lingered in the air, and it would be a long time before it lifted – if it ever did.

  The thieves were the first to leave. One morning the party awoke to find Eorcenwold and his band had simply disappeared, stealing off into the woods without a word. They had been the first to disembark from the ship, the first to find shelter in the town, and once they had sufficiently recovered and obtained fresh gear and supplies, they were the most eager to quit that place. They had left no message behind them, no farewell, no apology; just vanished like the last curls of smoke from a roll-up, and would never be heard of again.

  Kuthy, Elfswith and Ceawlin had not tarried much longer either. Their business with Wrythe, whatever it might have been, was done with the passing of the Majestic Head, and they had better things to do than hang around. A few days after they arrived, on a cold autumn evening as the company were returning from the bathhouse, they heard a whooping and a hollering from somewhere out in the shadows, and moments later the two adventurers came down the lane towards them. Each was riding piggyback on a moaning doll-face, slapping his rump and laughing harder than any had laughed during these months past.

  Such was the level of amusement to be found in Wrythe these days.

  Still laughing, they drew up in front of the four southerners, slid down from their sullen mounts and, when they had finally recovered from their merriment, began to say their farewells.

  ‘Bye then,’ Kuthy said, as Ceawlin alighted next to them.

  None of the men from Nordwas was sure how to feel or what to say.

  ‘Well, thanks for helping us out back there,’ Nibulus managed. ‘It was all quite an . . . eye-opener.’

  Kuthy gave him a sidelong look and smiled unevenly. Neither he nor Elfswith said another word, but (and this came as quite a surprise to the Peladane and his company) both adventurers hugged their comrades in a warm embrace, one by one. Then they simply mounted Ceawlin, waved one final time and flew off. The four men watched them go, circling the rooftops once before the Wyvern banked her wings and soared off into the west. The last they saw of them was a dwindling speck no larger than a fly, fading into the patch of fire-red spreading through the sky above where the sun had gone down. Then they were gone.

  As for the Tivor himself, as he looked upon that rolling tide of fire towards which he was flying, there came to him a final vision of ragnarok. The same as he had experienced only days before, when they had first arrived at Wrythe. This time however, he knew there would be no world’s ending, and happily he had many more red skies to gaze upon still.

  To those he left behind, still standing in the dirt of Wrythe and staring skywards, there came a revelati
on of another kind. For it was only now that they realized just how much that last warm embrace had cost them all. Both Kuthy and Elfswith had ever been light-fingered, and they did so love shiny trinkets.

  But, as Appa magnanimously commented afterwards, it was probably just their unique way of saying goodbye.

  Then came the day that they too took their leave, and there was still one farewell to make.

  ‘You’re not going to change your mind then?’ asked Nibulus of the old priest as they faced each other on that cold and rainy morning. ‘It’s still not too late, you know.’

  ‘No mind to change,’ Appa replied, shaking his head. ‘I told you before: I have no choice in this matter. But I’m not staying out of despair anymore; I’m not simply stopping here to die. You’ve seen how it is here, how lost these people are. I can help them. If there’s one thing I can do in the world, it is to help.’

  ‘What sort of help?’ Gapp demanded bitterly. ‘A mass cull?’

  ‘A helping hand,’ Appa replied. ‘Something to get them back on their feet after Cuna-knows-how-long under the influence of that evil bastard. Something to sort out the sickness in their heads. There’s so much healing to be done, and they need me.’

  They recognized the truth of what he said. He should never have come on this journey in the first place, and he certainly was not fit to continue any further. Not this journey, not any other journey now. And, looking at the wretched Oghain wandering about in bewilderment, it was difficult for them not to agree. Perhaps this wiry old terrier could do some good here.

  But there was another reason for Appa to stay that his friends guessed at, though they would not speak of it. Bolldhe. The thought of abandoning him in these cold black lands was too much for the old priest’s heart to bear. So he stayed, and all that remained for him to do now was tie up one very last loose end.

  He had handed Gapp a bunch of weba that he had found on the Jagt Coast, and it was then that they knew beyond any doubt that Appa was not coming any further with them.

  ‘For Marla,’ he explained, ‘so that she’ll understand.’

  ‘Of course,’ muttered Gapp, though he was not sure that he did.

  There was much work to be done in Wrythe. So much healing, so much teaching. It was a job Appa knew would not be finished in his lifetime, but at least he could start the boulder rolling. But before any of that came the matter of Bolldhe. He had died at sea, but none would suffer him to be buried there. So, in that alcove upon the promontory that faced Melhus Island he was laid to rest, and upon his grave Appa had erected this memorial. An effigy of sapling-wood and twined creepers, smoke-dried and lacquered with preserving unguents from the locals’ pickling stabbur, it was culturally crude and theologically gauche, and incongruous within its setting. Bolldhe, without a doubt, would have hated it. But it was the best Appa could do, and by the time he had finished it, planted it in the rocks and blessed it, he was fed up to the back teeth and wished they had buried the old sod at sea after all.

  As he had stormed off muttering down the pathway that led back to the town and his dreary little mission house, a break in the grey-black clouds had allowed a thin silvery beam of late afternoon sun to slant down upon the headland. It had a pure light, a cleansing light, and had it shone just a few inches to the left would have illumined the lacquered wood of Bolldhe’s memorial in a burnished gloriole of the deepest brown. But it had not done so, and had fallen upon a creamy patch of guano instead.

  Bolldhe was not to be forgotten by the Oghain. Appa saw to that. As the years went by his memory, grew into a firm local tradition, and many years later, despite the best efforts of the ageing and worn-out Lightbearer, the figure of Bolldhe was the focus of an established and depressingly religious cult. They would stand by his memorial, moan prayers and throw flowers, votive oatmeal wafers and spinal columns into the sea just as the sun was rising over Melhus Island.

  The Peladanes, now, they did things differently. Years later, if you had gone into any bazaar outside a temple of Pel-Adan and headed past the stalls that dealt in more mundane merchandise, looking for the ones that stocked holier wares, you would have become aware of a new genre of religious artefacts. For, placed alongside the usual librams, icons and souvenirs of the faith, could now be found a whole range of goods centred around the now-famous ‘Drauglir Quest’.

  There were books – some with the unwieldy, laughable and commercially suicidal title The Saga of Bolldhe the Great, I kid you not – that purported to be faithful eyewitness accounts of the adventure by those who had taken part, many of which had been signed by the members of the company (even, in some cases, by those who had died). There was a series of woodcut prints, many tapestries and a deck of cards, all depicting various scenes from the quest, some of which were even true. There were figurines, naturally, of all the characters and the monsters in a variety of sizes, materials, styles and colours, probably the most popular of which was a rather cubist Action-Nibulus in gilt-edged tin that had moveable arms and an assortment of detachable weapons, all rendered down to the last inaccurate detail. It was horrible.

  There was even a role-playing game that utilized strangely shaped polyhedral dice, minute but overpriced models, and rulebooks the size of bibles. This was aimed at pale young men who mumbled self-consciously, washed infrequently and never got picked for the stone-skimming team – and it was, frankly, a disappointment.

  In all, the Drauglir quest had achieved everything it had set out to, and great mirth and joyous laughter there was in the counting houses of the Peladanes for many an age to come. But various other types had also benefited. Kuw Dachs had been able to go private as sales of his threshers had hit the roof, and anyone with red hair, an unkempt appearance and even the meagrest scrap of wolfskin could charge eager young braves a hefty price simply to blow herb smoke into their faces and disgorge a stream of metaphysical rhetoric on the subject of soul-journeys.

  Yes, Bolldhe had made a big impression upon the Peladanes. Rather than just the marketplaces outside the temples, it was within the temples, and indeed within the Peladanes themselves, where the most profound changes had taken place. For a new breed of Peladane had arisen. Unlike his more traditional brutish counterpart, this new Peladane was more likely to affect an air of morose pondering or pained soul-searching than boastful swaggering or oafish debauchery. For him the favoured weapon was not the Greatsword, but the flamberge . . .

  None seemed to realize just how far they were from getting the point.

  Ah, but what of the temples? The inner sanctum of the Church of Pel-Adan? It was here that the greatest monument to Bolldhe could be seen. For in every temple throughout the north could now be found a great statue, tapestry or at least a mural of ‘The Deathbed of Bolldhe the Great’.

  In the temple of Nordwas Warlord Artibulus Wintus had commissioned the greatest statue of them all. In a quiet transept just off the main aisle soft light through stained-glass windows played upon rose-hued dressed stone, and shed its soft beauty over a tasteful array of wood relief pictures, depicting, among other scenes, human-headed beasts, three Vetters hanging a hell hound, and an especially inspired one of Bolldhe and Kuthy Tivor sticking bellows up Drauglir’s arse.

  But it was the central statue that drew the eye. For here could be seen, in full-scale lifelike detail, the very last moments of Bolldhe the Great. Recumbent upon a bed of feathers brought to him by the gulls and terns, and surrounded by the weeping figures of his cohorts brave, Bolldhe was depicted accepting at last the Greatsword of Pel-Adan from the kneeling Nibulus, reverting to his old faith just ere death. Before him, all – including Vetter, Cervulus and Parandus (and even the hound, who was licking the hero’s fevered brow) – were bowed in reverence, in sorrow and in thanksgiving. Even the thieves were present, prostrating themselves at his feet in penance and subjugation, repenting at last their ungodly ways.

  When it came to the man himself, the artists had endeavoured at first to honour the truth. They really had – at first
. The stone cutters had originally shaped Bolldhe’s eyes to be almost as bulbous as they had been in real life, his hair neither thick nor lustrous, and the face without the fair looks of a hero but rather those of an ordinary man. The whole thing was only a slightly ironed-out version of the truth.

  In the end, however, under pressure from both the Peladanes and their accountants, they had given in, scrapped the entire image, and replaced it with a standard handsome hero that bore absolutely no resemblance whatsoever to the disagreeable bug-eyed troll that Bolldhe had actually been.

  Nor were the actions of those present at his death entirely truthful either, for rather than kneeling, weeping and paying reverence to the Great Man, as represented in the statue, most had in fact been avoiding him, and were either smoking, bickering or relieving themselves over the side of the ship.

  Again, Bolldhe would have hated it.

  Neither were the nature priests of Erce to be left out, though their memorial was somewhat less conspicuous and decidedly less ostentatious.

  In the woods outside Nordwas, in a part that lay deeper than any countryman might venture – but not too deep for the determined pilgrim – a rillet of clear water ran. From the darkness deep within ancient stone it sprang, bubbling through cracks that tree root and frost had opened. Excitedly it ran along an overhung sill of rock, illumined only by the barest glimmer of light from outside, as pure and freezing as the crystals of late ice that still clung to the hanging moss in this gloomy place. Then with the reckless thrill of youth, it emerged into the twilit world of a cool and verdant hollow, and fell in musical rumour upon a green-bearded boulder below. Here the splash-drop haze was kindled into a spray of rainbow-hued diamonds by a solitary sunbeam that filtered through the leafy canopy, before it trickled through saturated cushions of moss down into a silted bed, laughing at the toads that croaked around it. Thence, in a hubbub of sprightly chattering, the rill arrived into a secret glade of hazel, where slow-worms slid through tendrils of ivy, a soft mist of rain pattered upon leaf and stone, and the cool air trilled to the euphony of the song thrush.