The Golden Shrine

by Harry Turtledove

  “Not so bad as that.” But Trasamund didn’t sound as if he believed it himself.

  “We usually say things won’t be so bad when we bump up against the Rulers,” Ulric said. “And they usually aren’t. They’re usually worse.”

  Trasamund had brightened till he finished. Then the jarl glowered at him. “Curse it, why can’t you leave that part out?”

  “Because I’m trying to tell the truth?” Ulric suggested. “I know Bizogots don’t always understand the word—”

  “What do you mean?” Trasamund said indignantly.

  “Oh, you know it’s true as well as I do.” Ulric sounded impatient, to say nothing of tired. “What gets you people through the winters up there except lies swapped back and forth? Don’t tell me any different, either. I know better. Anyone who’s passed a winter up on the plains knows better.”

  “Those are just for the sport of it. Nobody believes them. Nobody expects to believe them,” Trasamund said. “When we need to tell the truth, we can do it as well as anybody else. I’ve heard plenty of Raumsdalian liars, too.” He fixed Ulric with a significant stare.

  “Who, me?” the adventurer said. “If you can prove anything I’ve ever said is a lie, go ahead and do it.”

  “How am I supposed to? You talk about places nobody else has ever been to. You’re the only one who knows if there’s any truth in you at all.”

  “Hamnet’s been to some of those places,” Ulric said. “He knows whether I’m telling the truth or not.”

  Thus prodded, Hamnet said, “I’ve told you before, Trasamund: Ulric hasn’t lied about any places where I’ve been, anyhow. I would have let you—and him—know about it if he had.”

  “Huh.” Trasamund didn’t want to believe him, either. “But he talks about places you’ve never seen, too, Thyssen. As far as anybody knows, he’s making all that up as he goes along.”

  “I don’t think so, and I’ll tell you why,” Count Hamnet said. Trasamund could have looked no more dubious had he practiced in front of a mirror. Ignoring his expression, Hamnet went on, “Here’s why. When we went up onto the Glacier, Ulric could talk with the people we met there. How? Because he’d run into Bizogots who spoke a dialect like theirs way over by the western mountains.”

  “He didn’t talk about that before we went up onto the Glacier,” Trasamund protested.

  “No, but he’d done it. He’s done some things you haven’t done, Your Ferocity, and seen some things you haven’t seen, and you might as well get used to it,” Hamnet said.

  “Oh, don’t tell him that,” Ulric said. “Now I’ll be able to lie as much as I please, and he’ll have to swallow all of it. Where’s the challenge in that? Where’s the sport? Making somebody believe a really juicy lie shouldn’t be easy. You should have to work at it.”

  Count Hamnet exhaled through his nose. “You’re not helping, you know.”

  “How about that?” Ulric said cheerfully. “Anybody would think I was trying to be difficult or something.”

  “Anybody would think you were trying to be Skakki,” Trasamund said. Ulric bowed, as if at a compliment. Trasamund threw his hands in the air.

  MARCOVEFA KEPT LOOKING back over her left shoulder so often that Hamnet asked, “Did you get a crick in your neck when you slept last night?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I keep looking to find the way north.”

  He pointed out the obvious: “We’re riding south.”

  “Not always,” Marcovefa said.

  “What does that mean? What do you sense?” Hamnet asked.

  “One day, we will ride north again. We will need to know the way.” Marcovefa sounded like most of the shamans and wizards Hamnet had known: she obviously knew what she meant, and she just as obviously had trouble telling him. Or maybe she simply didn’t want to.

  He tried his best to make sense of it. “When will we ride north again? How far north will we ride? Back to Nidaros? Back to the woods? Back to the Bizogot steppe?”

  “Back to the Golden Shrine,” Marcovefa answered.

  That told him both more and less than he wanted to know. “Where is the Golden Shrine? How will we find it?”

  “It is where it is. We will find it when we need to find it.” Marcovefa shook her head again. “We will find it when it wants to be found.” She looked back over her shoulder once more, as if she expected it to spring up from the wheatfield they’d just passed, a field that might never be harvested.

  “You’re not helping,” Count Hamnet complained, as he had with Ulric.

  “I am giving you the best answer I can,” Marcovefa said. “It is true. Do you want me to lie instead?”

  “It may be true, but it doesn’t tell me anything,” Hamnet complained.

  Marcovefa shrugged. “Before I came down from the Glacier, if I asked you where Nidaros was, what could you have told me? You would have said, ‘It is far to the south.’ If you talked about the Bizogot steppe or the forest or the badlands where Hevring Lake spilled out, what would they have meant? Nothing. Less than nothing. I did not know what any of those things were.”

  Count Hamnet thought about that. Slowly, he asked, “Are you telling me I’m still up on the Glacier as far as the Golden Shrine is concerned?”

  “Yes, I tell you that.” Marcovefa looked pleased that he’d understood so well. “When you need to know, you will know. Till you need to know, you don’t need to worry about it.”

  She might have been pleased, but Hamnet wasn’t. “You make it sound like I’m a little child.”

  “When it comes to the Golden Shrine, we are all little children.” Now Marcovefa spoke with what sounded like exaggerated patience. She paused. “Maybe your Eyvind Torfinn is a big child. He know more about the Golden Shrine than most people. But no one is more than a big child. How could it be otherwise? For now, the Golden Shrine is hidden. Who has seen it, to say what it is like? Have you?”

  “You know I haven’t,” Hamnet Thyssen answered angrily.

  “You might be surprised. But all right, then. Neither have I. Neither has anybody. So what is the point of getting all upset?”

  “We need the Golden Shrine,” Hamnet said. “Won’t it help us against the Rulers? Can we beat them without it?”

  “We can do whatever we have to do.” Marcovefa was nothing if not evasive.

  More slowly than he might have, Hamnet realized she was being evasive on purpose. “You’re not telling me everything you know.”

  “You are not a shaman. I am telling you everything you can grasp.” Marcovefa opened and closed her hands. “I am telling you everything I can grasp, too. I know more than I understand. Does that make any sense to you?”

  “No,” Count Hamnet said. A moment later, he amended that: “Maybe.” He’d known something was wrong between Gudrid and him before he understood what it was. He didn’t like to think of the Golden Shrine in those terms. It was supposed to be good and pure and holy. Gudrid . . . wasn’t.

  “You worry too much,” Marcovefa said seriously.

  Hamnet Thyssen burst out laughing. “Now tell me something I didn’t know!” he exclaimed.

  “You should not do this.” The shaman from atop the Glacier made not doing it sound easy as could be.

  He bowed to her. “How do you propose that I stop?”

  “Wait till we camp tonight,” she answered. “I will stop you from worrying—for a while, anyway.”

  That gave him something to look forward to. He would have looked forward to it even more if Marcovefa hadn’t kept on glancing north. She always peered over her left shoulder—never over her right. Maybe that meant something sorcerous. Maybe it was just her habit, and he’d never noticed it before. Now he shrugged. He was too proud—and too stubborn—to ask.

  And, when they did camp, she kept her promise with an eager ferocity he did his best to match. Sure enough, making love did stop him from worrying . . . for a while, anyway. You couldn’t worry when the world exploded in joy. Afterwards, though? Afterwards was a dif
ferent story.

  But Hamnet didn’t worry long. Sleep claimed him before his thoughts could get all knotted up. Even as his eyelids sagged shut, he sent Marcovefa a suspicious glance. He wasn’t usually one to start snoring right after love. Not usually, maybe—but tonight he was.

  He woke before daybreak the next morning. Marcovefa lay beside him, snoring softly. He smiled—and waited for all his worries to come flooding back. They didn’t, though. His mind felt washed clean, almost as if he’d got over a fever that left him out of his head for a while.

  Was that magic? Or only a prolonged afterglow? Was there a difference?

  When she woke up, he tried to ask her. She didn’t want to listen to him. “Do what you need to do today, whatever it turns out to be,” she said. “Yesterday is gone. You can’t bring it back. You can’t change it. So what difference does it make? Tell me that.”

  “I remember it,” Hamnet said stubbornly. “If not for the skirmish yesterday morning, we wouldn’t be eating venison for breakfast today.”

  “You never know.” But Marcovefa smiled.

  “I wish you could see this country the way it ought to be,” Hamnet said. “Here south of Nidaros, this is the heart of the Empire. But nothing is the same because of the cursed war.”

  Marcovefa shrugged. “It is what it is, that’s all. Every bit of it, even the worst, is better than the mountaintop where my clan lives.” She blinked. “I wonder what will happen when the Glacier melts back and the mountain is part of the rest of the world again. Not in my lifetime, but not so long, either.”

  “No, not so long,” Hamnet agreed. If it wasn’t in his lifetime, though, he had trouble worrying about it. He looked south. “I hope your clan doesn’t come down into a world the Rulers are running.”

  “Rulers wouldn’t run it once my clan got through with them,” Marcovefa said. Count Hamnet feared she was an optimist. But maybe she knew what she was talking about. Her clansfolk were formidable people. They had to be, to survive at all up on the Glacier. In easier circumstances, they and the other small, thinly scattered clans up there might give anybody a run for his money.

  “Come on,” Trasamund said when they emerged from their tent. “We just beat one bunch of those buggers. Let’s ride south and find more of them—lots more.”

  Nobody told him no.

  NO, NOBODY TOLD Trasamund no. Still, as the Raumsdalians and Bizogots rode away from their camp, Ulric Skakki brought his horse up alongside Hamnet’s and said, “Sometimes God gives you what you ask for—just to show you you’re a fool to ask for it. How many more of the Rulers do you really want to run into?”

  “Good question,” Hamnet admitted. “How do you propose to drive them out of the Empire if we don’t run into them, though?”

  “Well, that’s a good question, too,” Ulric said. “We’re liable to run into too many of them all at once—that’s what bothers me. They really have swarmed down here, haven’t they? Raumsdalia’s a big, tasty dog, and it draws plenty of fleas.”

  “The Rulers are worse than fleas,” Hamnet Thyssen said. “And of course this country is better than the land farther north. Even the Bizogots like it better here than up on their steppe—well, most of them do, anyway.”

  “Bread. Beer. Fruit,” Ulric said. “Oh, they’ve got a few berries up there, but that’s about it. Smetyn doesn’t match beer—to say nothing of wine. And without bread . . .” He shook his head, as if to say civilized life was impossible. He wasn’t so far wrong, either.

  A large, black plume of smoke rising in the southeast marked some sort of struggle. Pointing toward it, Trasamund said, “We ought to see what that is.”

  “He’s been eating meat again,” Ulric Skakki said sadly.

  “Mammoth meat and venison,” Count Hamnet agreed. “So have you. Why doesn’t it turn you all bloodthirsty?”

  “Because I’ve got more sense than that?” Ulric suggested. That was more polite than saying, Because I’m not a Bizogot barbarian off the frozen steppe, but it amounted to the same thing.

  He didn’t have more sense than to keep from following the jarl as Trasamund rode toward the pillar of smoke. Neither did Hamnet Thyssen. The Raumsdalian noble caught Marcovefa’s eye. “Are you ready for more trouble?” he asked her.

  “As much as these Rulers can give,” she answered. By the way she said it, she didn’t think that would be much. She’d beaten their wizards again and again. On this side of the Gap, she was the only one who had.

  Hamnet thought about the lands on the far side of the Gap. The country the Rulers roamed was nothing special—it reminded him of the Bizogots’ territory. Somewhere over there, though, would be better land, land like Raumsdalia and the realms to the south. What kind of people lived on it? And what kind of wizards did they have there, if they could keep the Rulers penned up on those cold and nearly useless plains? That was a worrisome thought.

  It was also a thought he didn’t have time for. Now he could see what was burning: a village just too small to be a walled town. Most of the black, greasy smoke poured from one building. An oil store house? Hamnet wondered.

  He didn’t have time to worry about that, either. The Rulers were still sacking the village. They were killing the men who fought back—and some of the ones who didn’t—and amusing themselves with the women. Atrocities didn’t seem to change much from one side of the Glacier to the other.

  The Rulers might have laughed when they saw the Raumsdalians and Bizogots riding toward them. More easy enemies to get rid of, they must have thought. A man came out on a riding deer to face the oncoming foes alone. He was either a wizard or a maniac. Hamnet knew which way he would have bet.

  When the wizard pointed at the incoming arrows, they fell out of the sky. Then, all at once, they didn’t any more. One of them just missed puncturing the enemy shaman. Every line of his body shouted astonishment. He pointed again, as if to say, Listen when I tell you something!

  But the arrows, thanks to Marcovefa, didn’t listen. One of them grazed the Ruler’s riding deer. The animal bucked. Hamnet was sure he would have done the same thing. He was also sure he would have been ready for it. It caught the Ruler by surprise, though. Next thing he knew, he was sitting on the ground with Raumsdalians and Bizogots thundering toward him on horse back.

  He pointed at a lancer, and the Raumsdalian’s spearpoint missed him. The next attacker’s sword bit. The wizard let out a shrill shriek that seemed to hold more indignation than pain. How could this be happening to him? Weren’t such torments reserved for folk of the herd?

  Evidently they had been . . . up till now. No longer. Once the first swordstroke went home, the Ruler’s magic seemed to melt away like snow in springtime. By the time the army swept past him and into the village, he wasn’t good to look at any more.

  The Rulers in the village cried out, too, in surprise and dismay. Their wizard hadn’t been used to seeing his magic fail. They weren’t used to going unprotected against their enemies’ magic. But Marcovefa filled them with terror. They couldn’t even fight back with their usual dogged courage. They ran pell-mell, throwing aside their swords to flee the faster.

  Killing them as they ran didn’t seem sporting to Hamnet Thyssen. Then he remembered the battle in the woods the year before. When a glancing blow from a slingstone put Marcovefa out of action, the Rulers had used a spell much like this against the Raumsdalian army Hamnet led. They hadn’t been embarrassed to terrify their foes, or to slay them even though they couldn’t fight back.

  Marcovefa had held that spell at bay till she got knocked cold. Was sending it back at the Rulers now a measure of revenge? If it was, Hamnet hoped she found it sweet.

  Not all the Raumsdalians had been panicked by the Rulers’ magic. So, now, a few of the enemy fought back in spite of Marcovefa’s spell. Hamnet got a stinging cut on the back of his hand from one stubborn warrior. The man lay sprawled in death on the grass—much good his courage did him.

  The last thing the villagers had expected was to be
delivered from their tormentors. They cheered and capered at the same time as they mourned. Some of the women seemed eager to give their rescuers what the Rulers would have taken by force. Nine months from now, some of the babies would probably have the fair hair and light eyes that marked the Bizogots . . . and their byblows.

  “Now this is a welcome,” Trasamund said as he disappeared with a buxom brunette. “I’ll give her something to remember me by.”

  Ulric Skakki raised an eyebrow. “And we’ll hope she doesn’t give him something to remember her by.” He mimed scratching furiously at an intimate place.

  “You take a chance whenever you lie down with a woman.” Count Hamnet paused, considering. “And I suppose she takes a chances whenever she lies down with you.”

  “Of course she does.” Ulric mimed a bulging belly this time.

  “Well, yes, that, too, but it isn’t what I meant.” Hamnet hesitated again, wondering exactly what he did mean. Slowly, he went on, “You can wound a lover in ways you can’t wound somebody who isn’t. You take a chance that you’ll get hurt, or that you’ll hurt the other person.”

  “Life is full of chances. So you bet—and sometimes you lose,” Ulric said. “If you don’t bet at all, no one notices when you die, because you were hardly alive to begin with.”

  Hamnet Thyssen grunted. He’d gone years not betting—not betting his heart, anyway. He’d risked his life again and again. With a hole in the center of it, the chance of losing it hardly seemed to matter. At last, he fell in love again . . . and then he fell on his face again.

  “Women are strange creatures. You can’t live with them, but you can’t live without them, either,” he said. “Do you suppose they say the same thing about us?”

  “Why are you asking me?” Ulric Skakki returned. “People have called me a lot of different things, but I don’t think anybody ever said I had to squat to piss.”

  “Thank you,” Hamnet said. The adventurer raised a questioning eyebrow. Hamnet explained: “If I ever needed a cure for romantic thoughts, you just gave it to me.”