Madbond

by Nancy Springer

  “Sorry,” I muttered, meaning my noise or the cut or the shame, I am not sure which. Or all of them.

  “Don’t be. What was it?”

  “Nothing.”

  He crouched down beside me. “A mightily fearsome nothing!”

  I merely looked at him, and after a moment he nodded. “Very well, nothing it is,” he remarked, and he got up and went away, taking Birc with him and leaving me in darkness.

  I did not close my eyes again. I lay until dawn staring up into that darkness.

  Chapter Six

  The next night I muffled my mouth with the torn end of Talu’s blanket before I went to sleep. But I had no more than dozed when I was jolted wide awake and rigid, choking back a shout, at the hint of a dream. After that I did not even attempt to sleep, nights. Nor did I keep to my dark and solitary chamber. I prowled the headland, the strand, the seaside forest. The loneliness of vast ocean, vast sky, towering mountain seemed cleaner than my loneliness inside Seal Hold.

  I could catnap sometimes during the day. Never deeply asleep, I could hold my own against the dreams. The rest of the time I talked to Talu, mostly. Except for Korridun, she was the only one who would abide me. It could no longer be said that the Seal Kindred were afraid of me, for they no longer fled at my approach, but they sullenly avoided me, giving me no answer if I spoke to them. Plainly, I was shunned. I did not in turn shun them, but I knew that I was, in a sense, mad—for staying, for stomaching cold shoulder, snubs, rebuffs. I knew my name, my father’s name, he, Tyonoc the king, and of him I remembered only greatness and his warm regard. I remembered my two brothers: Tyee, gentle and good, and Ytan, sour but steady, as a strong horse is sometimes sour. And my people, my wandering fair-haired people—I could have found my way to their encampment. At any time I could have left Korridun’s village and gone back to them. Yet I stayed.

  Some of the Seal Kindred I already knew by name, just from listening to them. Especially the maidens. There were Lumai, “the hummingbird,” and Lomasi, “sand flower,” and Winewa, “beautiful.” I watched the maidens hungrily, very willing to love one of them. They were fair, the maidens with their smooth shell-tan faces and their long clouds of soft brown hair, which they twisted with strands of beads. And their strong young bodies—there was not much to be seen of their bodies under sealskins and woolens, but I tried to imagine. I liked the way they laughed, often but not foolishly. Korridun’s people were much to my liking, all of them, tough and lively and often generous in their dealings with each other. Certainly I did not shun them. It was only they who did not like me.

  I told myself it was their dislike that troubled my sleep.

  On the fifth night after my name had come back to me, lying stark awake as ever, I waited until all was silent and then walked softly out into the wider silence of the night. The day’s clouds had rolled away toward the east, all except high, thin mares’ tails so airy I could see the stars through them. And I could see the white wisps of the high clouds themselves, washed in moonlight. Looking at the sky, I felt some nameless comfort. Perhaps, after all, the nameless god did warm me under his bright wing.… I gazed for a while, then walked aimlessly down the headland toward the ocean. Being a Red Hart hunter as I was, I kept to the shadows and moved silently, stalking past the largest lodge—

  And something hit me on the back and shoulders with a force that featly knocked me breathless. A wildcat—no, a man, enemy, legs against my ribs, riding me, arm locked under my chin, throttling me, denying me the gasp of air I needed to fight back. My hands came up to claw loose his hold, but he was strong and, what matters more, deft in the fighter’s arts. A well-timed shift of his body weight threw me over, and in half a breathspan I was lying helpless with a stone knife pressed hard against my throat, blinking and gasping and staring up into the full moon against which loomed the dark head above me.

  One of them, I was thinking. Olpash, or one of the others. It hardly seemed fair. “I am not armed,” I said hotly.

  “Dannoc!” he exclaimed, snatching the knife away from my throat.

  “Kor?”

  “I am sorry!”

  “You?” My voice rose high in my astonishment. I sat up, and then I could see him in the moonlight. He looked dismayed.

  “I have hurt you! The knife bit through the skin.”

  “Truly?” I felt at my throat, brought away fingers wet with blood. A perverse joy welled up in me and I laughed aloud, laughed as I had not laughed since I had so strangely come to this place. Finally, it seemed, something was going right for me.

  “Why, then, we are even!” I declared, laughing.

  He seemed startled by my gaiety, but then he grinned. “Matching marks,” he said. The cuts on our necks were very nearly the same.

  This time I did not scorn the aid of his hand as he helped me up, and I looked at him in admiration.

  “I have never been more handily felled! What were you doing, skulking about and jumping me from atop the lodge?”

  “I might as fairly ask what were you doing, stalking about below?” he retorted. “On a night of the full moon?”

  Understanding struck me. The strange testing required of Seal kings … “Of course,” I blurted. “Your vigil.”

  I sobered at once, and for his own part, I could see that already he was uneasily glancing about him.

  “I more than half expect a challenger,” he muttered.

  “I will keep watch with you,” I told him.

  “Sakeema, no! It is not permitted. Go back and get some sleep.”

  “I have not slept in days. Moreover,” I pressed, “I am a free hunter of the Red Hart tribe and I go where I will. Who is here to prevent me?”

  Bluff, jest, and he knew it. He was smiling as broadly as I.

  “Well, as that is the case,” Korridun acceded, “I suppose you had better stay. Let us get out into the open, someplace where we can see them coming.”

  “Is that permitted?”

  “No more than you are.” He swung one fist with sudden violence. “To Mahela with it. I am tired of playing this prickass game. Most of us can prove themselves when they find a name and then be done with it, but I must go on proving myself again and again and again.”

  We moved to the highest rock overlooking the ocean, and settled ourselves there facing each other so that I could scan the approach that lay to his back. “How long have you been doing this?” I asked. “Keeping vigil.”

  “Ten years. Since I was twelve.”

  I believe I gaped. It scarcely seemed possible. “They—they sent challengers against you when you were twelve?”

  “None when I was twelve. It was ordeal enough just to spend the night alone, in the darkness, wakeful, expecting them. The first challenger came when I was thirteen, and he very nearly killed me. Only a stroke of wit saved me. I had to become a clever fighter early, as I was still small and thin.”

  My astonishment turned to anger. “Who would attack such a boy?” I demanded. “And why did you have to withstand it alone? Why at all? Where was the regent?”

  “The regent would have killed me before then.”

  He looked out over the ocean and told me the tale.

  “His name was Rhudd, the regent, and he was an older man, and a decent man when my father left. I was grieving, and he spared me any worry about the affairs of the people, taking all such decisions upon himself. That was a troubled time; I can see as much now that afterwit aids me. There was doubt among the people, muttering in the council. Guardsmen deserted. The true ruler had left, and the Fanged Horse Folk were threatening as they always did when it was a hard winter on the high steppes, and the mood of the people matched mine. Rhudd had to take firm hold of power and wield it, or all would have come to bloodshed. But it was not long before power itself began to take hold of him, passion for power began to rule him, and he became a threat. Yet no one knew it but me.”

  “Why not?”

  “His conduct did not change at first. It was all—inward.” Kor leane
d toward me, explaining. “I have told you how I can—feel things, since I visited Mahela’s realm. I felt Rhudd’s passion for power as it grew, and I felt his struggle. Truly he was a decent man. He struggled hard within himself, more and more desperately. Then one day there was no more struggling in him, only something stony and settled, and I knew he had made up his mind to take the kingship for himself. It was only a matter of time and planning until he killed me.”

  I sat uneasily, finding the story oddly disturbing. Oddly so, because there was no doubt as to the outcome: Kor yet lived, and by the looks of things Rhudd did not. Why, then, was I clenching my hands so tightly together?

  “In the same way that I knew I could not trust Rhudd,” Kor went on, “I knew two whom I could trust utterly. The woman who took charge of all the household affairs, and the eldest among my guardsmen. Istas, and her brother, Rowalt.”

  I tried not to groan at the mention of Istas. As for Rowalt, I did not think to wonder what had become of him since. I supposed he was one among Kor’s people whom I did not yet know by name.

  “I had to assume there were spies, so I went to them in secrecy, at night, and woke them out of their sleep to tell them what I feared and why. Rowalt was a big, slow, good-humored man, and, while he would do whatever I asked of him, I do not think he believed me. But Istas has a sharp mind, and she had seen a few indications on her own. She took the change in Rhudd as seriously as I did—I could sense that in her. With her aid, I felt there was a chance for me.

  “We thought at first to find out how and when Rhudd would act. Istas listened to all the talk of the servingfolk, asked discreet questions to draw forth gossip, even listened on the sly to Rhudd’s private councils. But she learned nothing. Plainly Rhudd intended to act alone, and there was no telling where or when. For my own part, I never strayed far from the most open parts of the headland, and I was suspicious of anyone who invited me elsewhere. Even though Rowalt stayed with me at night, I was afraid to sleep, and I made myself nearly sick with dread.”

  “I believe it,” I muttered. A severe test for so small a boy.

  “Istas was more of a strategist than I, at the time. She came to talk to me in the dead of night and convinced me that we could not wait for Rhudd to act. The problem was twofold: we had not only to preserve my life, but to expose Rhudd’s scheming beyond any doubt. The Kindred was sufficiently quarrelsome and divided as it was, and we wanted it no more so. We chose out several members of unquestioned probity, people whom everyone would believe, and we laid our plans. I was to be the bait.

  “The very next day, making sure Rhudd heard me, I said I would go bird netting, alone, and named a place. In due time I set out. Once out of sight of the village I ran, knowing Rhudd would soon be after me. I had to be sure I reached the place where Istas and Rowalt and the others were waiting.

  “It was a narrow scar halfway up the first slope, a place where the pink doves often came to feed on gravel. At the upper end stand some big boulders—the Seven Sisters, we call them. I ran and made sure my allies were there, hidden in the birch bushes to either side. Then I settled on the largest rock. When Rhudd came I was sitting there mending a net.

  “I did not bother to feign surprise. He walked up to me with ready knife, and I stared back at him levelly.

  “‘So you know,’ he said. ‘You have come out here as the doomed winter’s elk calf once came out of the herd to meet the wolves, drawn toward death.’

  “‘What do you plan to tell the others?’ I asked him.

  “‘Nothing. Let them think a demon has taken you.’

  “He raised the knife then, swiftly. But I threw the net in his face, and Rowalt charged him with a bellow like that of a bison bull, and that ordeal was over.”

  Korridun fell silent, looking out at the midnight sea. “The small creatures in the waves,” he murmured after a while, “they glow like fireflies.”

  “What did you do with Rhudd?”

  “I had him hurled into the ocean,” he answered in a hard voice, “from this very cliff.”

  The matter did not bear more talking. “And you truly, yourself, took hold on kingship? At that age?”

  “Yes. Istas advised me when I asked her, and her counsel was most often sound. I had many advisors. But the final say on all matters was mine and mine alone. There were quarrels, threats from within the tribe and from outside, the Fanged Horse Folk raiding as always, even the Otter River Clan feeling for advantage like a ringtail feeling for a frog.… I had to learn wisdom quickly.”

  Wisdom I must have sensed even then, for I did not laugh at him.

  “And you had to start keeping the king’s vigil,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  We sat silent for some small time. I scanned the moonlit headland behind his back. No enemy was coming.

  “Dan,” he said after a while, “the human enemies are the least of it.”

  A bittersweet pang, for that was what my friends had called me, Dan. Surely I had friends, still, somewhere.…

  “Human challengers I learned to deal with after a while. In most cases.” He gave me a merry glance, yet the smile quickly faded. “But the devourers, the servants of Mahela—three times one has nearly destroyed me.”

  I stiffened where I sat, unwilling to speak, unwilling to believe him, eyes on his face. He spoke evenly enough, his eyes on the sea.

  “None came for years, at first. My mother must have bargained for that respite. Or perhaps it was that—thoughts of women had small power over me at first.… Whatever reason, I knew nothing of the enemies from seaward, and I grew overweening. I knew by then when the challengers from landward were likely to appear. I could tell, I could sense their jealousy hardening into hatred as they readied themselves. Some nights, young fool that I was, I deemed it safe to sleep rather than keep vigil. I would lie down in the lodge yonder, on the floor in front of the hearth, and like an innocent I would close my eyes.

  “One such night I had a dream.…” He aimed a wry glance at me, questioning. “You know the sort of dream? When the cock awakens and lifts his head …”

  When the breath deepens and the hands move. Yes, I knew that sort of dream well, and I had wasted my seed on more than one such. I grinned.

  “I was dreaming of—a maiden. She was naked and lying atop me, caressing me, her breasts at my face. I was kissing her breasts in blissful pleasure, but at the same time I felt as if they would stifle me, and suddenly I awoke. And it was no dream, but no woman either.”

  I had stopped grinning. “What?” I whispered.

  “A sort of a—great cloak of flapping flesh, cold as a fish. It was all over me and curling around me, taking me in. The breasts were real, huge, and they were in my face. But they were cold, nipples like nubbins of ice. The—cleft in which my left hand lay was real.” Kor laughed briefly, a low-pitched laugh, mocking himself. “It was cold and full of slime. But where I had dreamed of a beautiful face—there was no head. A single eye above the breasts, and between breasts and cleft a—a huge maw, a hollow ringed with teeth like those of a dogfish, and the thing was sucking me in.

  “My knife lay close at hand—at least that much sense had been left in me. And my right hand lay at the breasts; I was able to free it. I snatched up the weapon and stabbed. But I might as well have been stabbing seawater for all the effect it had. I tried to wrestle the thing off, but I might as well have been fighting the surf.”

  He was making me half sick, speaking of it. “What did you do?” I asked.

  “I lay very still, and there was a sort of—a defiance in me, a stubbornness, that I was I, myself, and I would not be devoured and become something else, food for its ghastly maw. I lay there, and the power of the thought filled my body and made me hard. The struggle was to keep hold of the thought, not giving in to horror. The devourer did not give up easily, either. It curled ever tighter around me, like a starfish on a clam. Until dawn I lay under it, and then it loosened itself, lifted and flew away seaward.”

  “
Flew?”

  “Flew—or swam through the gray air. Cloak of flesh out to either side like blunt wings, or maybe sails, with the wind sending ripples back along the length of them. It shone like a salmon—it was very nearly beautiful. Then from a height it plunged into the waves.”

  “Great Sakeema,” I muttered.

  “Yes, I wished he were with me.”

  So Kor knew that yearning, too! He was silent a moment before he spoke on.

  “Twice since then such a devourer has come to attack me, but they have not found me asleep since then. Not that it makes much difference,” Kor added dourly. “They can all the better wrap around me when I am standing. But it is less—less humiliating to meet them so.”

  He laughed softly, with no mirth.

  “When they found I would not let them make me part of them,” he said almost as an afterthought, “they tried something different. They let go of me and folded back, leaving the mouth foremost, then bored, like leeches. They tried to become part of me.”

  “Kor,” I burst out, “that is horrible! It cannot be true, any of it!” But even as I spoke I remembered the scars on his chest.

  He looked at me in some small surprise. “I do not often lie,” he said mildly.

  “There are no such creatures! Death is not a horror, it is a mercy, given to us by—the god whose name has been forgotten, older than the All-Mother, greater than Sakeema, so that we might know joy of birth and grief of parting, lo—love.…” Odd, that I found it hard to say the name of love.

  “Who has told you that there are no devourers?” Korridun asked me quietly.

  “My father!” The words came out sounding hard, though I had not intended them so.

  “Ah.” He looked away from me as if I had answered many questions. “Well, say I have dreamed it all, then, Dannoc,” he told me quite softly. “Believe what you like. But now you know why I watch the sea.”

  “I thought it was because you reverence the sea, you Seal folk,” I muttered.