Foxmask

by Juliet Marillier

  “I can’t believe he would do it,” Creidhe breathed. “After he lost his own daughter. How could he?”

  “You judge him by the measure of men you have known, Creidhe: your father, perhaps. I have reason to doubt Asgrim. There was a certain—irregularity—at the time of his daughter’s abduction, which did nothing to improve my opinion of the man. As Ruler here, he is clinging to the power he has, but his fingers are slipping. In such desperate times, men’s boundaries change.”

  “Niall’s right, Creidhe,” said Breccan. “If not for Asgrim’s persuasion, I imagine your friends would have come back for you long ago. He’s keeping them out of the way until he can make this—arrangement. We don’t have much time. Tomorrow, or the day after, we must move you to a place of protection.”

  “Where?” she asked blankly, a picture of stark, precipitous hillsides, tall cliffs and pounding seas in her mind. “And what about Thorvald and Sam? How will they find me?”

  “I could take a message,” put in the young man, Colm, cheeks turning pink with shyness. “I could go in and offer to say prayers; with luck, there’d be time to slip in a word or two before they kicked me out. I’d need to go when the Ruler was away. Those two lads can tell me when it’s safe. I know them.”

  Breccan smiled. “Good. Do it carefully. We must ensure Creidhe has time to reach her destination before we draw Asgrim’s attention. He went to Blood Bay, didn’t he, to fetch the boat around to his encampment?”

  “So I’m informed,” Niall said. “And may well have left again by now. Possibly with a small side trip on the way.” He turned to Creidhe. “The bay where your ship was beached is conveniently located for the crossing to the Isle of Shadows, where the elders of the Unspoken dwell. If I were the Ruler, I would not pass up this opportunity to sound them out, possibly even to finalize an agreement. I think we must expect a visit fairly soon.”

  “Where can I go?”

  “To our brothers in the north, initially. Oh, yes”—he had seen her look of surprise—“we are not alone here. This place attracts those who seek God in solitude and hardship. We have two brethren on the far side of this island, with a boat, and there’s another hermitage on the Isle of Streams. Best that you go there until we can get word to your friends. I’m sorry, Creidhe. This is frightening, I expect, but I will not insult you by offering less than the truth.”

  Creidhe shivered. “I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t scare me. I just wish there was some other solution, one that didn’t involve death or suffering. If my father were in Asgrim’s position, I know he would arrange a council, get all parties together, talk openly about the situation and try to agree on a course of action that suited everyone. He wouldn’t do things secretly, all by himself.”

  “Asgrim has not been acting alone,” Niall said grimly. “It is apparent the women of the settlement must have known what was intended for you.”

  “Yes.” Creidhe’s voice was sober, remembering the special meals, the combing of the hair, the green-trimmed gown. “And one of them warned me. One was brave enough to do that, even though she had just lost her child. There are good people here. Why doesn’t Asgrim seek some other way?”

  “He believes, perhaps, that there is no other way. Do not forget, his adversary deals in curses and spells, voices that bring death, and armies of superhuman strength. I have long considered whether another solution could be reached. I am inclined to believe a substitute might well be acceptable to the Unspoken; it would be a matter of presenting it in a way they understood, that is all. Persuading them to a slightly broader interpretation of their own lore.”

  “It is a barbaric faith,” said Breccan. “Their ears are closed to God’s word, and so to his infinite mercy. I would give much to be able to reach them, but they will have none of us. Asgrim’s tribe is little better: he fears God’s truth.”

  “Mmm.” Niall’s response could have meant anything. “You should go in the morning, I think, Colm. Make sure you’re there and away before Asgrim sails the boat into Council Fjord. Be unobtrusive; don’t upset anyone. I don’t suppose your young men are of the Christian faith, are they?” he asked Creidhe, brows raised.

  “Well, no. Sam adheres to Thor, a good god for fishermen. Thorvald doesn’t think much of religion. He says that if a man cannot depend on himself, he is not much of a man.”

  Niall’s mouth quirked at the corner. “Indeed. Ah, well, Colm must do the best he can. A word or two is all we need: a warning, specific enough to let them know the urgency, but not too detailed. We don’t want anyone challenging Asgrim to a fight.”

  “And Creidhe must be gone soon after. We must wait long enough to be sure she won’t be likely to run into Asgrim or his men, but we need her away from here before he comes looking. The best time would be at first light, the day after tomorrow. Colm will be back by then and we’ll know if he has been able to speak to the young men.” Breccan frowned. “One of us must travel with Creidhe, the other remain here to answer questions.” He exchanged a complicated look with Niall. “If he’s going to come in person, you are the one best able to deal with it.”

  “You mean I tell lies with impunity, risking God’s disapproval, every day of my life? Yes, I understand. In addition, you are less advanced in years. I suspect I might have difficulty matching our young friend’s pace across country, judging by her impressive speed up this hill. Very well, that’s the way we’ll do it. Now let us turn our attention to the remains of this extremely fine breakfast. What a pity we can’t keep you, Creidhe. I’d love to see what you’d do with a catch of fresh mackerel.”

  The plan had seemed, if not foolproof, at least reasonably likely to succeed. The man who went by a name he had borrowed from a tale heard in childhood waited in the hermitage alone, waited for the arrival of the Ruler, angry, imperious, demanding the return of his prize bargaining piece. Colm had left one day, Creidhe the next, walking on up the valley at first light with Breccan by her side. Breccan would not carry a weapon, only his stout staff of ash wood. They had vanished across the hills like shadows, the girl’s yellow hair closely hooded, and her bag on her back: the strange web she made traveled with her everywhere. Colm had not come home. Niall milked the cow, fed the chickens, cast an inexpert eye over the vegetable patch and returned indoors. Writing appeared to be impossible; his mind was elsewhere. The sun passed overhead and began to descend into the west, and there was still no sign of the boy. He was almost a day late. Niall collected the eggs, mucked out the byre, forking the soiled straw onto the garden. Colm was proud of his leeks and onions; one should not neglect them. The cold glow of the long summer twilight spread across the sky. Niall lit a solitary lamp, more for reassurance than from necessity. All was quiet. The last plaintive cries of birds sounded through the air, and beneath them roared the old, deep song of the sea. He waited, alone in the night.

  At first light he made a decision and, staff in hand, set out to the southwest on the high path toward Council Fjord. Before the sun had climbed two fingers’ breadth into a clear sky, he stumbled over Colm, face down among stones, young hands open and helpless on the pebbly scree of the hillside. A single blow had felled him; there wasn’t much blood. Niall turned him over and closed the sightless eyes. He tried to do what was appropriate, kneeling, hands together, whispering a prayer: Pater noster . . . but the words deserted him. Breccan was the one this lad needed to speed him to whatever reward awaited him, not some ill-fated pretender who could not set his hand to anything without turning it all to ashes. The boy was tall, heavy. Niall could not get him up onto his shoulders. He settled Colm as best he could, hands gentle on breast, wooden cross between them, rocks wedged by his side so he would not tumble down the sheer slope. When Breccan returned, they would come back with a board and carry the lad home.

  More waiting. Long; too long. He sat into another night, listening to the silence. The house was cold. He did not light the fire. One lamp burned; Breccan would need that to find his way across the hillside, when he came. If
he came. It occurred to Niall that, if the truth of his heart had matched the exterior he showed the world, he could have prayed and taken some good of it. The gods, however, were not on his side and never had been. That was no more than just: he had long dismissed their efficacy. Tonight he desired faith, but desire in itself is not enough.

  Time passed. At some point in the night he heard footsteps outside, and was instantly by the door, knife in hand.

  “Niall?” said a voice that was barely recognizable, and when Niall pulled the door open, Breccan staggered in to collapse on the earthen floor, wheezing and shaking. Niall lit lamps, made a fire, fetched blankets. He waited; the other could not yet form rational speech. When the words came they were accompanied by tears, and the russet-haired Ulsterman made no attempt to brush them away. “Set upon . . . going over the pass . . . the Unspoken . . . too late to help . . .”

  “It’s all right,” Niall said. His own voice sounded distant and small, as if it came from some other place. “It’s all right; you must drink—here—and warm yourself. Let me see if you are injured.”

  Breccan had an angry lump on his head, and one wrist was badly twisted. Niall fetched salves, bandages, bound the arm, swabbed the head wound, got his friend, at last, to bed.

  “Colm?” whispered Breccan as his lids closed over eyes full of shadows.

  “Not home yet,” Niall said quietly. “Now sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

  He smothered the lamps then and stood in the darkness, listening to the beat of his own heart, pounding relentlessly on and on, strong and insistent. One would think it would have given up by now: what was the point? If one were doomed to fail, to turn gold to dross and squander what was most precious, why go on at all? And yet, for some reason, he had done so before and did so still. Perhaps he had been waiting all this time, all these long years, to learn what it was he must do. It whispered in his mind somewhere, a terrible thing, an extreme thing, one that froze the blood even of a man who believed his life to be entirely without value. He would not allow it to take shape yet, not while Breccan lay wounded and the boy out on the hill unburied. Still, the half-formed thought edged at his mind. Sooner or later he would have a choice to make.

  SEVEN

  Who would awaken the past?

  It shines like a sunrise

  And cuts like a fine blade.

  MONK’S MARGIN NOTE

  The moment their hands seized her, Creidhe’s mind was filled with a single thought: she would survive, no matter what. They came out of the mist in total silence, long-armed, pale-faced, dark-hooded, their eyes bright and wild, their mouths set with grim purpose. Breccan began to lift his staff; then, with a grunt of surprise, he toppled to the ground as his assailant tapped him on the skull with a short, stout club. Creidhe’s heart was pounding; she could feel cold sweat breaking out all over her body, she could smell her own fear. Their hands, gripping her arms from behind, were cold as ice and iron-strong. Her instinct was to fight, and for a few desperate moments she did, wrenching away from their grasp, stamping and kicking, using her nails to scratch and rip. Soon enough she noticed, through a haze of mind-numbing fear, that they simply loosed their hold, avoided her blows, then apprehended her again. There were many of them, tall, silent and strong. One thing became starkly clear: to try to escape this way was completely pointless. Breccan had been laid out senseless, and her efforts to resist might simply precipitate the same treatment for herself. Then she’d have no hope of getting away. A second insight was more worrying. It was evident they were at some pains to ensure she was not hurt, not marked. They held her carefully and moved with caution, so she could in no way bruise or damage herself in her frantic struggles.

  They were shepherding her off the track now, still without a word spoken. Breccan they left where he had fallen. Two walked by her on either side, thin fingers encircling her arms. Others went before and behind. No weapons had been drawn save the club that had felled her companion. She hoped he was not badly hurt. At least he would be able to take word back, when he came to.

  The pace was brisk, and after they had gone a certain way the direction veered westward, apparently back toward Council Fjord. They followed the course of a fast stream that hurtled along between rocks. Here and there the ground was boggy, saturated; they made sure she did not slip and fall, though her boots were coated with dark mud. Creidhe ventured a glance to left and right; she did not like the look in her captors’ eyes. It was clear enough who they were and what they wanted. Their faces, their eyes, their strange garb fashioned of ragtag skins told her they were not of the Long Knife people, but those others Niall had spoken of. And she knew what it meant, this careful handling, this avoidance of damage to their newly acquired prisoner. She must be delivered to the tribe unmarked: a perfect trophy. Stumbling over jagged rocks, sliding across pebbly scree, Creidhe weighed it in her mind. A girl who was sun and moon in one form sounded very poetic, but what it actually led to was less than dreamlike. What had been done to that girl, Sula, was crude and hideous. Perhaps they had believed it justified in order to allow each man of the tribe fatherhood over the child she was to bear for them. That did not lessen its brutality. Now it was Creidhe’s turn; it would be her fate to provide their new seer, Foxmask remade. She saw it in the way these men were looking at her, for all the cautious touch of their hands. Their strange eyes mingled superstitious awe and avid lust. Creidhe shuddered. This simply wasn’t going to happen. She wouldn’t allow it to happen.

  She used a trick her mother had taught her, breathing to a pattern, slowing her heartbeat, summoning strength of purpose and clarity of mind. She considered the situation as she marched on, with her grim captors maintaining their relentless, silent progress all around her. There was no point in screaming. Who would help her? They were all in this together, Long Knife people and Unspoken. She must make her way out of the trap alone and unaided.

  It was a long walk, on top of the distance she had already traveled with Breccan from the hillside hermitage above Brightwater. Creidhe tried to keep track of where they were, knowing such knowledge would be vital if she managed to escape, but the thick mist clung close in the air, blotting out all useful landmarks, and she had to resort to guesswork. She judged they had crossed a high pass and come back down toward the shore of the western fjord, if shore it could be called: steep cliffs fringed the narrow waterway for most of its length. Today the mist veiled that lovely isle to the west, the mystical, cloud-swathed realm that still called to her in her dreams. She could catch a glimpse of other, closer islands: a narrow, improbably steep one, and by it a squat, sturdy arch. Now they were coming down to a place across the fjord from those small isles, a place where there was a narrow strip of flat land by the water and a couple of crude cottages on the hillside above it. The small dwellings looked bleak, deserted. Her captors had begun to whisper among themselves; she could not make out the meaning. There was only one word she caught clearly, and that word was Asgrim. That did not surprise her. She had seen already that among the tall, disheveled figures of the Unspoken walked one who was not of their kind, one who was familiar to her from a morning at Brightwater, when the Ruler had come back in a hurry and Jofrid’s small son had been laid in the cold ground. This hulking warrior was none other than Asgrim’s personal bodyguard, and his presence here among the enemies of the Long Knife told her Niall’s suspicions had been well founded. She wasn’t being abducted. She was being traded: peace for Asgrim’s tribe had been bought, and the price was her own future.

  Unfortunately for the Ruler, Creidhe thought grimly, she had no intention of letting herself be anyone’s captive for longer than was strictly necessary. She’d better come up with a plan soon, for she could see now that on the narrow strip of ground below them, perhaps the only landing place in all this sheltered waterway, lay a long, low boat of tarred skins over a wattle framework. Beside it more men of the Unspoken waited. Each was tall, lean and ghostly pale of visage. Each stood utterly still. It was a stillness
that spoke of ancient things, of an identity that was part of the very bone of these stark islands, enduring and deep-rooted. A dark power seemed to emanate from them. They wore weapons: spears of bone, bows and quivers, short clubs. There was nothing made of iron. Their garb was of crudely cured skins over coarse wool, with here or there a tattered cloak, a strand of shells around the neck, a small bone threaded on a cord. The tight discipline of their mouths stood at odds with the hunger in their eyes, shadowed, feral eyes that returned, over and over, to Creidhe’s own figure, well covered though it was by gown and cloak, boots and scarf. The wind had teased a lock of her hair from under its neat wrapping and it drifted, golden and fine, across her face. It was this, above all, that drew their gaze, and Creidhe saw in their mask-like faces that disturbing blend of awed veneration and open desire. For a moment, terror and revulsion came close to overwhelming her. She must disregard that; she must not let fear paralyze her. Only weak people did that, and she was strong.

  A plan, that was what she needed. Nothing immediate presented itself. The boat was being readied to depart under oars, with seven men to accompany her—six to row and one to guard her, she supposed. Brother Niall had spoken of the Isle of Shadows, to the south. On the shore, the big bodyguard stood still, watching. His face might have been carved from a lump of stone, so little did it reveal as the wild men bundled her into the boat and settled her in the stern with one fellow seated beside her.

  The options darted through Creidhe’s mind, to be discarded each in its turn. Try to run for it: she wouldn’t even get off the boat before they stopped her. Scream for help: a wasted effort, she knew that already. Probably every single one of the Long Knife people knew what was happening to her and welcomed it. Gudrun had known, and Helga, for all their smiles and their little gifts. She made an exception for Jofrid, a woman of surprising courage. That big guard had known even when he ran his eyes over her, back at the settlement. Niall and Colm were far away, beyond reach, and Breccan lay injured up in the mist somewhere. As for Thorvald and Sam, they seemed almost like ghosts from another life, so long it was since she had seen them. All the same, the moment seemed to call for some expression of what she felt.