by Ben Galley
Heimdall turned his face to the distant west. There came a whistling sound from behind him, and the grating of claws on loose rocks and ice. A lion’s tail flicked at the brisk morning air.
Heimdall shook his head to the gryphon’s question. ‘I cannot see him… wait…’
Another whistle, more urgent.
‘Wait. Yes, now I can…’
Ilios could hear the dark concern in the god’s voice. He crept forward a little more, and put his beak on the god’s shoulder. A pair of piercing golden eyes joined Heimdall’s tawny pair. ‘I see death on him. He is not moving.’
Ilios clacked his beak a few times. His claws clutched at the rocks, concerned.
‘Maybe. It is down to Loki now.’
The gryphon sighed, a musical little hiss.
Heimdall shook his head, and stared down at the stubborn snow that was attempting to swallow his boot. ‘We will see,’ he said. ‘And hope.’
Ilios hummed a sad tune through his closed beak. His feathers shivered in the breeze.
‘No, we cannot tell Tyrfing. We keep this between ourselves, until we know. Understand?’
The gryphon clacked his beak once, and only once.
Chapter 11
“Old Åddren’s dying wish cursed us all. Cursed this city. Cursed it with a murdering madman and a blind old fool. How dare such as they sit on the thrones and bear the Weights. A Written? Such a thing has never been allowed, and for good reason. And Durnus, the blind old crone. Where did he come from? Who had heard of him, before the Battle? It is too suspicious. They are unfit to rule, I say. They will see our proud country go to the dogs! Something must be done…”
An entry stolen from the diary of Council member Malvus Barkhart, dated Spring of the year 905
The light was slippery, a nest of eels. Their tails poked through the curtained window, stabbing him every time he cracked an eye. Sound drifted around him like treacle. Time was dust in his mouth. Voices were ancient echoes in his ears, drifting by on a lazy wind from a forgotten land. They were not real. They were not for him any more.
Why isn’t he waking up?
Hand me the cloth!
Who did this to him?
Do something!
It’s up to time now.
Time, the cruellest of mistresses. Time did nothing but wound.
Farden had been in this place before; this cold, dark, and faceless land hemmed by black mountains. He remembered a ship, a half-drowned cat, and a shingled beach that stabbed him like a spear. He remembered a tree and rope. A crow. A shadow. Memories? pondered the mage, dazedly, in a voice that echoed around him in the void, thrown back by the dark mountains that bordered his consciousness. No, not memories. Dreams. Mere dreams to be drowned by a deeper sleep. The mage felt the cold breeze of his void wash around him. He felt sand in between his naked toes, and closed his eyes. He was ready to let go.
Dead men don’t dream.
The sand became wet velvet between his toes, icy cold. Farden opened his eyes and found himself by a ribbon of fast flowing river. It was blue. Lanky shadows pushed him forward from behind, bodies half-realised in translucent flesh. They shoved and pressed against him, but the mage stood his ground, and pushed back with his own shadowy arms. Some shouted for him to move. Some jostled past to slosh through by themselves, but the water took them and swallowed them like a leviathan gorging on an overturned ship.
And only the dead belong here.
Farden twitched, feeling the spray as the river swallowed another. This was no dream. This was a thin stab at reality, the precipice before the void. Farden took a step into the icy water, and felt the pebbles grate against the faint skin of his feet.
‘Back!’ boomed a voice. Farden looked upstream and saw a ship surging towards them. The ship was long and narrow, sporting tall, gaunt masts that scraped at the mists of Farden’s dream, sail-less and empty.
As it came nearer, flowing with the strong river, Farden saw it had a figurehead, and what a ghoulish thing it was. Half a vulture, half a grinning man, both spat from some nightmare. From its ribs down, ribs that had been picked garishly clean by its own curved beak, it was an emaciated man wrapped in a blood-red loincloth. His insides were all splinters and rotten flesh. His porcelain feet dangled in the frigid waters and kicked at the shadows that pawed at the ship’s sides. From the chest up, the creature was a giant vulture, like the ones Farden had seen in the Paraian deserts, in another life. An old life. In the place of arms it had wings, and they had been nailed to the crusted bow of the ship at many points. Some of the nails appeared to have wormed free and then bent back into place like rusty hook. Its head, that terrible head, was a giant beak framing black eyes. Dead eyes. Dead eyes that flicked back and forth from shadow to shadow. The creature was screeching at him.
‘Back! Back I say!’ it yelled, with a vulture’s pink tongue.
But it was the ship itself that was truly nightmarish. Now that it was close, Farden saw it for what it truly was. Not wood, no, nor metal. Nails. Innumerable finger and toenails, clasped together with some unholy magick. Every inch of the ship was fashioned from them. Farden felt the bile rising in his throat as the ship sidled up to the riverbank, scraping the shingle.
‘You!’ spat the figurehead, hanging over him. ‘You must go back! You do not belong. Straddler!’
Farden turned around, seeing the faces of a countless crowd of shadows queued behind him. An impossible horde, miles and miles in the making. In the distance, Farden’s eyes somehow spied a single light burning in the blurry dark. A single candle. Somehow he knew.
Farden winced as a shiver of pain coursed through his insides. No. To go back meant pain, in every sense of the word. Farden took another step forward into the river. The grotesque figurehead began to squawk and flap. ‘Back! Not today!’
The mage’s feet were becoming numb. It was strange to hear himself say the words that followed. ‘I don’t want to.’
‘Straddler! The one who lives in a sea of dead, go away!’
Farden shrugged. He tried to remember why he had come here, but found he could not. How many paths can be blamed for a man’s end? There had once been a woman. A child maybe? He thought of a tree, and felt a rope around his neck. ‘But I am dead,’ he whispered. It seemed so easy now. The incessant thoughts that had plagued him had finally been silenced. How simple and quiet it was by this strange river.
The dead pushed him forward towards the ship. They were flooding aboard now, shadowy feet rasping across the nails of its decks. Something red and gold flashed through his mind. I planned on living forever, he remembered.
‘Lost!’ screamed the vulture. ‘Take him away!’
Instead of pushing him, somebody behind him pulled. Hard, for a ghost. Farden was dragged from the river and barged aside. A pain began to burn in his chest, soft at first, and then blinding.
‘We will see you again,’ winked the creature on the bow of the ship. ‘But not today.’
‘Then when?’ yelled Farden. His shadowy flesh had begun to shiver, to crawl.
The creature shrieked as the ship moved on. ‘Take him away!’ it screeched.
Farden was lifted up on the arms of the shadows, the countless shadows of the dead, and tossed around like a buoy in a storm. The river and the crowd faded to blackness as he was carried towards the lone candle.
Alive, in a sea of ghosts…
‘Hold ‘im down, woman! ‘Old ‘im down!’ somebody shouted, their voice muffled and strained with effort. A pair of dark shadows loomed over him menacingly. Smears of light painted the room behind them. Farden tried to open his eyes further but they refused to obey. A pair of strong hands grasped him by the shoulder and Farden thrashed about as wildly as his weakened body would allow. Pain filled every bastard inch of his body. His throat felt as though he had swallowed a fistful of broken glass.
‘Get the bottle! An’ the cloth, quickly now!’
There was a crash as Farden’s foot caught the corner of a table. A c
loth was clamped to his mouth. He tasted something foul on his tongue and in his nose. Farden roared out as the blurry world grew dark again.
The next two weeks were a mere snap of the fingers to Farden; a dreamless blur of cold nights and dull aches. It was merciful in a way. While his mind fell into a deep coma, his fever raged like a bonfire through his body. His wounds spent the first week suppurating and festering, and then somehow, with the aid of Seria’s needles and the foreigner’s strange herbs, they cooled and calmed, and slowly began to heal.
While his body burnt, Farden rambled senselessly for hours on end. Traffyd built a bed for him on the porch so he could heal and breathe in the fresh air, and so they could get some sleep without being woken by his feverish, unconscious raving. Seria had never paced so much in her life. Traffyd barely saw any sleep. The foreigner, Farden’s apparent saviour, did nothing but sit in the corner, smoking a pipe and producing strange liquids and herbs from his pockets when needed.
It was on the eighteenth day that Farden finally returned to the world of the living. His fever had broken three days before, but the mage had turned a shade of ghostly white and had fallen deathly silent. Seria sat by his side, her head on his leg, a half-polished fork clenched in her drooping hand. It was the first time she had slept in three days, and she was snoring like a boar. A few yards away, the rain pestered the plants and flowers of the garden. It was a light rain, the tail of a spring storm that had rolled through Fleahurst the day before. The earth was silent save for the pattering and Seria’s snoring.
Farden cracked open a crimson-rimmed eye and saw a thatched roof hanging above him. Wherever he was, it was raining, softly but persistently. He could tell by the rattling of the wooden gutter above his head. He opened his other eye, and saw a door-frame, and a wall of dry flint, the colour of dusty bone. There was a rumbling sound coming from somewhere. It sounded like distant thunder. A storm, he decided, after a moment of confusion. His thoughts were like sand trickling through an hourglass. Grain by grain they were coming back to him.
With a great effort and a greater deal of pain, Farden turned his head to look out at the rain. The sight of it softly pelting the leaves and petals of a garden reminded him how dry and cracked his lips were. Farden tried to move his hand and felt a heavy weight on it, a weight that snuffled and croaked as he twitched the lazy, leaden arm. Thunder, it wasn’t.
The woman lying on his arm instantly sat bolt upright. It was Seria. She was almost as bleary-eyed as the mage was. ‘Farden?’ she whispered, half in awe, half in worry. The farmwife quickly rubbed her eyes and then, for some reason known only to herself, she reached forward to slap him lightly on the cheek. Farden flinched, then winced as the pain blossomed inside him, like a thorny rose. The mage was too bewildered to say anything, and his throat was too dry to speak. He just blinked like a newborn, as she got to her feet and rushed inside the cottage.
Traffyd appeared moments later, his old face packed with the same mixture of emotions as his wife. ‘Farden,’ he said softly. He looked hesitant. The mage moved his raspy tongue around his lips.
‘You aren’t going to slap me as well, are you?’ he croaked, barely words.
‘Jötun, no. Did she really? Dear me…’ Old Traffyd’s face fell solemn when he saw the light red blotch blooming on the mage’s wan cheek. ‘She’s spent every hour with you these past three days. Ain’t slept at all, bless her. She don’t mean it.’
‘Three days,’ gasped Farden. Traffyd quickly grabbed a bark cup and dipped it into a nearby rain barrel. He gently lifted the mage’s head and held the little cup to his lips. The mage managed a few sips before he choked on the rest. He spluttered and Traffyd fetched a cloth.
‘Three days,’ said Farden, when he had recovered. ‘Is that all?’
‘No, my friend, you’ve been unconscious for three weeks now, by my reckoning.’
Farden let his head droop onto the bed, hearing the gentle crunch of the dried moss and pungent herbs inside the skinny pillow. Three weeks. ‘What happened?’ He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to make sense of the dismembered pictures flashing behind them. A tree. A rope. A ship. Fingernails?
‘You died, Farden, several times,’ replied Traffyd. Farden turned his head at that. His eyes were wide. ‘Stopped breathing on us more than once. You think Seria slappin’ you now is bad, you should’ve seen how she brought you back to life. You gave as good as you got, though. Tried to kill me, you did, when you finally came back around. You were bellowing something about ghosts. Rivers. Traitors. Nonsense mostly.’ Traffyd’s leathery hand moved to his throat, and Farden, if he looked closely enough, could see little telltale bruises on the old farmer’s skin. He turned back to look at the thatch.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Psh, you weren’t yourself, man. Forget it. Anyways, you had a fever like I ain’t ever seen. You burnt for days. It was only when that friend of yours gave me some of his herbs, what did he call them…? Gungfoot? Gritfeer?’
Farden looked even more confused. If he could have lifted his arms he would have grabbed his head and shaken everything back into place. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Friend? What friend?’ A moment of nonsense capered through his head, an image of a rat gnawing through a rope and dragging him halfway across the moors by it. Farden shook his head.
Traffyd looked confused as well, and more than a little worried. ‘Said he’s known you a long time. Says he came at just the right time too. He was on his way to visit you, and when he did, he found you swingin’ by your neck. He dragged you to this cottage. Gods wonder how he knew we’d take you in, but he did. He’s been here ever since, not sleeping, not eating, just waitin’ for you to wake up. If you ask me, lad, I don’t trust him one bit. But he saved your life, and that counts for something in my book.’
Farden lifted a shaky, heavy hand to rub his crusty eyes. Dried tears and sweat turned to dust under his fingers. His hands felt as if he had stolen them. As did the rest of his body. He tried, very briefly, to sit up, but the weakness forced him back down.
Traffyd put a firm hand on the mage’s chest. ‘Easy now. A man don’t die and then go running around in the same month. Besides, it ain’t just the rope you’re recovering from. Your friend told me ‘bout your habit. Your body’s recovering from that too. Still in the woods, if’n you ask me, lad.’
‘But I have to… they took my…’
‘I know. You were screaming bloody murder for several days. Rest, Farden. You ain’t going anywhere just yet,’ said the farmer. Farden wasn’t sure whether it was the warmth of the heavy hand pressing on his chest, or the calmness in the old man’s voice, but he found his eyes closing, and the rain fading to silence.
When Farden next awoke, it was still raining. Even softer this time. The air was cold, blissfully so, and full of mists and swirling curtains of drizzle. The sun was a myth. The day was colourless, save for the paint-blotches of Old Traffyd’s garden and the patchwork fields beyond it. Farden blinked at the view, lopsided as his prone position made it.
Somebody came to check on him. A door creaked and the sound of clanking dishes and hushed conversation momentarily spilled onto the patio. Footsteps wandered towards him. Boots, if Farden’s ears were not mistaken. There was a tap as a beaker was placed next to his head.
‘That bastard gryphon,’ said a voice, a man’s voice, but not Traffyd’s. Farden wondered if his mind was playing tricks on him again. His mind still felt numb, but the pain had gone for now. ‘That’s what you kept muttering when I was watching you,’ said the voice.
Farden turned his head and found a fair-haired man, probably a handful of years above thirty, staring down at him. He seemed tall, but that was probably because the mage was lying down. He had a youthful face. It burnt with a strange measure of intensity he had only witnessed once before. Farden’s mind tried desperately to remember where. His clothing was fresh, foreign. He wore an off-white cloth shirt buttoned tightly to his neck and a long leather coat. There was no armour on the man, no je
wellery of any kind, no scars. Not even a mole or a birthmark. Every single one of his blonde hairs was in perfect place. He wasn’t even blinking. The realisation landed like a brick in a well. It made Farden’s heart sink, and made his lip curl. ‘And which one are you?’ Farden croaked.
The man touched the beaker to his lips. He spoke while Farden sipped. ‘For a man who’s just been hauled back from the brink of death, you don’t seem very grateful.’
Farden lifted his hand to wipe his lips. He felt a little stronger today. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t out of the kindness of your heart.’
‘And why would you say that?’
‘It never is with you lot,’ replied the mage. He shook his head. ‘Which one are you?’
The man ducked his head so he could look out into the garden. He watched the rain for a moment, and then turned a little to point east. ‘You can see me, before sunrise. I am the Light-bringer. Aurvandill in our tongue. Loki in yours.’
‘Loki. Like the mountain?’
‘No, that would be Lokki. An unfortunate coincidence.’
‘That’s a shame.’
‘Mmm.’
Farden rubbed his face with his hands. He couldn’t help but notice how much his beard had grown, and how dry his face and lips were. He must have looked like a wild man. He could feel the lumps in his neck where his muscles had been bruised and the rope had torn his skin. He dreaded the next mirror he’d see. He sighed through his fingers. ‘Why?’ he asked, question muffled.
Loki still hadn’t blinked. ‘Why what?’
‘Why are you here?’
‘That really doesn’t elaborate on your question. Why did I save you, do you mean? Because I arrived just in time. Why was I coming to you? Because I was ordered to.’
‘By whom?’
‘Heimdall.’
‘And who is he?’
‘The Guardian. One of the oldest.’
