The beat was telling him something. He had to go on a long journey. She was there - Adisla, the one he had come to find.
His final thought, when it came, did not arrive from outside. It was not a stream of symbols seeping into his mind with the rhythm of the drums, though that is what the rhythm seemed to intend. Neither did it come from the grotesque girl-woman who looked on from the firelight. The magic around him was just a spark to a fire, igniting something far bigger than itself. The thought came from himself, from within. He spoke, to give it form.
‘I must fortify myself,’ said Vali.
He stood. He felt very long and sinuous, more like something made of shadow than flesh. Things were moving around him. Vali reached out to catch them, to break them, to feed on them. He felt a blow and brushed it away. He heard screams but was lost to the taste of the meat. He fed deeply, feeling the stress of his prey seep into him with a gorgeous tingle.
‘I am fortified,’ he said. There were some broken things on the ground, things that had been useful to him, things that had been going to help him, direct him and show him the way. He didn’t need them any more; he knew where he was going. He was going towards the drumming.
39 The Nature of Magic
Adisla had now been on the island for months and to her surprise had been treated very well. It wouldn’t have been her first choice of a home - a long flat rock rising out of a turbulent and cold sea - but her fear that she was to be some stinking Whale Man’s bed slave had not been realised.
The people were kind: they brought her meat and bitter bread, berries and salted cheese, even gave her a rough beer to drink. She was also allowed to sleep alone - in a low conical tent which was open at the top to allow the smoke of a fire to escape. Although the tent was tiny, the little old woman detailed to care for her was skilled at building the fire and Adisla found it less smoky than a longhouse.
Her arrival had been terrifying. The whole rock had seemed to swarm with men - thirty or forty of them, all in animal masks, but not like the pelt that Feileg wore. These were skilfully constructed from supple twigs, shaped into the likeness of a bear or wolf, a bird, reindeer or seal, and covered in fur or feathers to terrible, frightening effect. The men drummed and sang and peered at her closely, but they didn’t touch or harm her.
Haarik had been given instructions on where he might find his son and been told that a scout was watching from the mainland, ready to ride a reindeer hard to the young man’s slaughter if he tried anything. The Whale Men had dealt with Norsemen before and were careful to extract oaths that they would not be harmed once Haarik’s son was released. For all his talk of violence, the king looked pleased to leave. He had a warrior’s distaste for magic and wanted to collect his son and then put as much distance between himself and the island as possible.
Most of the Whale Men soon left the rock - including the sorcerer who had travelled with her - but Adisla remained with the old woman to care for her and in the silent company of a man called Noaidi. He was small, even for a Whale Man, dark-haired with very blue eyes, and he habitually wore a wolf mask as he moved about the rock. At nights he usually went down towards the sea on the open ocean side and sat at the mouth of a huge cave, playing his drum and singing in a way that seemed to echo the sounds of the wind. Noaidi said nothing to her for days. And then, when she had been there about a week, she realised she had not actually tried to speak to him.
One night when he didn’t go off to chant Adisla saw him remove his wolf mask and go to his tent. She went across and knelt at the entrance. He was lying on some furs and the little fire had been fed until the inside of the tent was as hot as a smithy. In the firelight, without his mask, he was a shocking sight. He must have been around twenty-five but was terribly drawn, his cheeks hollow and his eyes red. He hardly seemed to notice her at first and she saw he was trembling.
‘Why am I here?’
Noaidi looked at her. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. He clearly had to think hard to remember the words and spoke Norse in a thick accent that reminded Adisla more of a cat than a man.
‘You speak our language.’
‘I know your people. Too well.’ He smiled a brief smile and she could see that he was very ill indeed.
‘Then why am I here?’
The man thought for a moment. He coughed and took a swallow of water from a cup. Then he gestured her into the tiny tent. She crawled in and sat down, very near to the blazing fire. It was uncomfortable but she wanted to question her captor. The sorcerer seemed if anything rather cold. He smiled again though, and seemed pleased to be able to talk to someone, although he was breathless and his words were halting and slow.
‘I will not lie to you. In our visions we saw a spirit that we foresaw would do us great harm - Jabbmeaaakka, the death goddess, lady of dark places and the dark places of the mind. The prophecy was clear: she would destroy us. So we looked for magic to protect ourselves. First we struck at her. It did not work. A year ago the spirit met one of our men in the underworld. The underworld in here.’ He tapped his head. ‘She killed him. Like that.’ He snatched with his hand at the air, as if crushing a fly. ‘But we saw that the spirit was making powerful magic, magic that she began years ago, before she even knew she was beginning it. Now we seek to turn that magic against her. So we looked for you.’
‘Why me?’
‘We saw, in here -’ again he tapped his head ‘- that the way to turn this magic was through you. Her weapon will be our weapon. We need powerful magic to do this. There is another spirit, a wolf god. We can set him against her if we can bring him here. He will come - looking for you.’
He was shaking quite badly now.
‘And what happens when this spirit arrives?’
‘Through you,’ he said, ‘he grows teeth.’
‘Do spirits have teeth?’
The man swallowed some more water.
‘Spirits and gods take many forms. They are here -’ he tapped the ground ‘- and they are everywhere. You are just here.’
‘And you?’
‘Everywhere. Sometimes.’
‘How?’
The man tapped the ground again.
‘This is solid when this -’ he tapped his head ‘- is solid. When this -’ his head ‘- becomes as water then this -’ the ground ‘- can flow away. When it does, I fight the goddess. Our minds tangle and we battle each other.’
‘How?’
‘Through resolve and persistence. I steal her magic. We are winning.’
‘It doesn’t seem to do you much good,’ said Adisla. ‘You look fit to die.’
‘The things I win from her . . .’ He seemed to be having more difficulty framing his words. ‘I would not take them unless it was necessary.’
‘Does she harm you in this struggle?’
‘Not so very much. She seems weak or distracted. I cannot tell. To do what we need to do, to make the thing that will kill her, we have to steal her power from her. The damage is not in the taking of it but in the having. There are things of great power - runes, symbols older than the gods. I rip them up by their roots and take them from the death goddess and plant them in my mind. Sustaining them, it seems, is what costs.’
‘And these runes will help you call your wolf?’
‘I think so. I cannot tell. Sometimes I can sense him, sometimes not. Sometimes he is a man, sometimes a wolf. I see his face and I know he will come. I am sure of that.’
‘How are you sure?’
‘Many ways.’
‘Be careful the wolf doesn’t use his teeth on you,’ said Adisla.
Noaidi nodded. ‘I have gone to him in dreams and called him. When he arrives I will bind him. He will use his teeth where he is meant to - when he grows them.’
Adisla continued to question Noaidi. She discovered that Noaidi was not his name but rather a title given to sorcerers in that region. His real name was Lieaibolmmai, which Adisla found very difficult to say. He had become a magician because as a child he had shown the
gift of prophecy.
‘All my life,’ he said, ‘I have seen this day coming. All my life I knew that Jabbmeaaakka would strike at me.’
The fire in the tent burned on and the two of them fell into silence.
Adisla thought Lieaibolmmai seemed a gentle man and couldn’t believe he was planning anything bad for her. After a long time she asked the question that was concerning her most. ‘Am I a sacrifice?’
‘I don’t know.’
She looked into his eyes and saw nothing to reassure her.
‘Am I to suffer?’
‘No,’ he said but looked down and would not meet her gaze. ‘Magic is like speaking. You know what you want to say, but when you speak, not the exact words you are going to use. His mind, he who is coming, must open, it must be shocked into opening. Then the spirit will come to earth fully. Perhaps his mind can open without you, perhaps not.’
‘Which spirit?’
‘The wolf, the wolf who will protect us.’
Then he would say no more.
After a month, under a sky of slate, men came over from the mainland in boats. They took Adisla to Lieaibolmmai’s cave in the hollow light of the late day. It was a huge wound in the side of the rock, three times as high as a man and more than three times as wide. It was strewn with rubble and dipped down into blackness. The sorcerers lined up at its mouth, peering into the dark through their animal masks.
‘Down,’ said Lieaibolmmai to Adisla. He was not friendly now but serious. He was wearing his wolf mask so his face was invisible, but she could see that under his red robes he had become terribly thin. His voice was quiet, like a fever sufferer’s, and she saw sweat at his neck despite the cold of the day.
‘For what?’
‘This is where the spirits are,’ he said. ‘Here they can come through. Here the wolf comes to earth.’
‘I will not go.’
Lieaibolmmai swayed slightly, as if her refusal was causing him pain.
‘Until he comes you are safer here.’
‘I will not go.’
He took off his mask and looked at her. ‘Please,’ he said with gentle eyes. ‘It is easier if you agree.’ One of the other Noaidis came to his side and supported him. Lieaibolmmai was trembling, standing as stiff as a tree in his battle to stay on his feet. A man who was willing to put himself through such an ordeal was unlikely to tolerate much more resistance.
Adisla thought of what she had done to her mother, of the grief that had dogged her every day since the raid and her apparently remote chance of ever returning to a normal life. Then she went down with the Noaidis. Remarkably, Lieaibolmmai came with her.
At a point where the passage narrowed and dropped so much that she had to bend her head to continue, it fell away into a shaft. There was a flat boulder leaning against the wall, a great slab. Underneath it were some wooden wedges. Adisla looked at it and shivered. They were going to seal her in.
Lieaibolmmai caught her look. ‘Only a precaution,’ he said. ‘If he is human, as we expect him to be, there will be no need for it.’
Adisla wondered what he meant but decided she would rather not know the answer and said nothing more.
A Noaidi showed her how to wrap a rope around herself in order to climb down. There was no light as she descended, just darkness and the smell of wet rocks. She went down about the height of five men and found herself on an uneven floor. Lieaibolmmai was lowered, limp as a hanged man. He untied himself and sat panting for a while. Then he gently pushed her forward through the dark.
She felt her way, a hand on the ceiling, another on the wall, her feet testing for further drops. It seemed that they went a long way forward. Then she felt the passage open out and Lieaibolmmai told her to stop. He struck a flint, set some tinder burning and lit a whale oil lamp. A wolf’s head loomed at her from the dark, its teeth bared and its eyes angry. She screamed but quickly realised it was only a carving, though very disquieting. The sickly light showed the cave around her smeared with runes, a tiny stream of water filtering into a pool at the back. He pushed the flint and tinder into her hands, set down a pack beside her and took off his thick reindeer coat.
‘For your comfort,’ he said.
‘What happens here?’ said Adisla.
‘Magic is like speaking,’ said Lieaibolmmai. ‘Let us see what we are required to say.’
‘What am I waiting for?’
‘You will see in good time.’
‘How much time? How long must I spend in here?’
‘Not long, I think. It is hard to tell. We are working the magic as best we can. He is not easy to find sometimes. Today. Many days. I don’t know.’
Noises drifted down from above: drumming and chanting.
Lieaibolmmai gave Adisla a sad smile. Then he turned and was swallowed by the dark. Adisla heard the sound of the Noaidis heaving him up and then the slither of the other rope as it was pulled in. She was alone in the blackness and the damp.
40 Wolf Hunt
Feileg woke. Around him were the voices of ravens. His fever had gone and his wound was healing. He sat up and looked around. For a heartbeat he didn’t understand what he was seeing. Where there had been a family, a fire and welcoming smiles, now there was only ruin.
Of course, he had been among corpses before, and corpses he had made too, but never anything like this blood swamp. The bodies had been devastated: men were unrecognisable from women, children from animals. How long had he lain there? He looked at the bodies. They were beginning to rot.
The scene did not repulse Feileg or make him retch as it might have someone who had not spent half his life as a wolf, but it did make him shake. Since he had been looking for the girl, humanity had come back to him; suffering had started to mean something. He felt the years that had been denied to these children, the tendernesses and the joys. He thought again of his own mother, the break from his family that had felt like an amputation.
Feileg pondered what to do. He had no idea what these people’s customs were or how they preferred their dead to be treated. The birds were there and he knew that the wolves would come down when the darkness held for long enough to conceal them. It seemed a good way to him, so he just set their stone back on the stump that served for an altar, put the drum beside it and left.
It was not difficult to track Vali. The ground was wet, though not sodden, and the prince’s footprints were clearly visible at points, blood on the grass at others.
Feileg thought of what he had seen on the boat, the tempest made flesh that the prince had become, thought of the sight of him among the dead bodies, feeding. The wolfman, for all the killing he had wrought with hands and teeth, had never eaten human flesh. He never had the need in the winter, when animals were weak and easy prey, nor the opportunity in the summer, when most travellers went by sea. And besides, Kveld Ulf had not taught him to eat men. The shape-shifter knew the diseases that could emerge from cannibalism and the madness that it brings.
Feileg was sure that Vali had attacked the reindeer hunters. Whatever enchantment the prince was under had consumed him. And yet Feileg felt he had no choice but to follow. Vali was looking for Adisla, which meant that Feileg was bound to him. When Feileg freed the girl and she married him, he would ask her to release him from his vow and he would kill Vali.
Feileg followed Vali’s trail east for days, relying on scent, tracks and hunter’s intuition. In a pass through some black mountains, he came across a cave. Vali had stayed there for days, he could tell. The prince had not been his normal fastidious self, and on the ground at the mouth of the cave was human shit. Feileg saw that it was sticky and cloying and it smelled of blood. It confirmed what he already feared.
He didn’t want to sleep there, so he followed Vali’s trail across the pass.
As he continued east, it became colder and the skies more grey than blue. The vegetation turned to scrub, a stunted tundra of dwarf trees and shrubs that seemed to cringe from the wind. Shelter became difficult to find. Feileg ate what
he had taken from the ship - he hadn’t been able to bring himself to take the family’s food, even though he had known he would need it. He drank from streams and hid in caves and holes when it rained. Weeks passed and he began to find indications that Vali was not moving as quickly. He was stopping regularly, sometimes in caves, sometimes in the open, but there was a different smell to the mess he was leaving now. Beneath the human scent was something else. Feileg knew it better than any smell in the world. It was wolf.
After days more travel the mountains ended and Feileg was at the edge of a broad plain going down to low hills by the sea. After some scouting, he found a place where the grass was flattened. He followed the trail and saw a mob of ravens ahead of him. They scattered to the sky as he approached, rising like the spirit of the corpse they had been eating. The dead man had been a hunter. His squat bow was nearby. Feileg took it along with the arrows. He hadn’t shot a bow since he was a child, nor used any other weapon, but now he would accept any help he could get. The ravens were watching from a distance. ‘You’ll eat when I’m done here and not before,’ Feileg said. He knelt to the corpse. The skull was sheared in two. No bird had done that.
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