Angels and Exiles

by Angels

  Dagr’s role in the celebration was at the same time exalted and insignificant. He had nothing to rehearse, no skills to hone. While others were busy, he spent the remaining time in idleness, too old now to forget that this was one of the final times in his life he would spend thus carefree, still too young to properly appreciate it. He saw Griss a few times, and they played games that involved more physical exertion as a way to burn nervous energy. But the pleasure Dagr had once derived from these amusements had gone sour.

  And finally the time came for the wedding. The great hall of the Hold had been chosen to host the ceremony and the feast; its doors were shut as final preparations were made. The entire Hold would attend, from the most powerful families down to the lowest of the thralls. There would not be enough space for everyone, and the excess guests would be housed in one of the adjacent rooms.

  The younger kin of Hradulf gathered to meet with Pater Kolgrim shortly before the ceremony was to begin. There were seven of them. As soon as Hradulf’s laggard youngest nephews had arrived, the priest took charge of the little group and led them down passages neighbouring the chapel. These secondary corridors were still lit, but far less brightly than the main corridors usually travelled. After a brief but twisting journey, the priest stopped before a door fitted with a padlock. His braided belt, knotted at the hip, carried a key on a metal loop; the priest twisted it free and fumbled at the lock with it.

  He ushered the youths into the chamber. It was a strange room, very old yet devoid of any eye-slits: the walls were solid stone, untouched since their original carving. Pipes crossed the ceiling, with tiny yellow icicles dripping from some of the joins, though for a fact it was hardly cold this close to the core of the inhabited regions of the Hold.

  At first there was no illumination in the room, save for a green glow at the far end; then the priest brushed his fingers against a plate set into the wall and woke a trio of ceiling lamps. This was a smallish place, but it appeared larger than it was, being nearly empty. Only a set of shelves, of tarnished metal, occupied the far end of the wall. Around the shelves could be seen a pattern of linear stains against the stone, vestiges of departed structures. The shelves were partitioned by thin vertical leaves of metal, pierced with many small holes. Within each partition a funeral mask rested on a wooden stand. Most were dark; a few glowed softly.

  The priest arranged the youths in a line, facing the masks. “To whom—” he began, then stopped, his voice breaking. He was an ageing man, prone to forget his orations. He passed a hand across his face, took a deep breath, tried again. “To whom will come the honour of bearing our ancestors’ faces?” he asked in an irregular cadence.

  “To us it shall befall, the children of Hradulf,” replied Ormolf with assurance. He was the next-eldest of Hradulf’s offspring, twenty summers old. A few years ago he had started tormenting Dagr, and rather than taper off over time, the bullying was getting steadily worse, though Dagr knew far better than to ever fight back. The priest smiled tremulously at Ormolf and picked one of the glowing masks.

  “This is the mask of the ancestor Patrekr. We thank him for his presence among us today. Wear the face of your ancestor with pride, child of Hradulf.” He slipped the band over Ormolf’s head and adjusted the mask a trifle, fussing with the rim.

  When his hands retreated, something shifted and Ormolf was transformed. His features were still visible through the transparent visor of the mask, still recognizably his. And yet, the face was not his own anymore. It was the face of an older man, strong and proud, cruel perhaps. The face of the ancestor Patrekr.

  Dagr had gasped; but he hadn’t been the only one. For a moment everyone lost their nerve; then Ormolf spoke, his voice slightly muffled by the mask’s mouth hole, but still thoroughly his. “I’ll—I will be honoured to wear the face of Great Patrekr,” he said. Bergsveinn laughed nervously, breaking the tension.

  It was easier after that. Oddr, Hradulf’s youngest legitimate son, barely older than Dagr, received the face of Avarr-Ram. Then the brothers Aldulfr and Bergsveinn, sons of Hradulf’s dead brother Lifsten, received a glowing mask each.

  Three of them were left, but only two glowing masks remained. Dagr saw Gyllir receive one. Now only little Vigmarr was left, a boy of barely ten. Surely Dagr outranked this baby—but of course not. Vigmarr received the last mask. For a long moment Dagr believed this was a trap of some sort, a deliberate humiliation. The row of young men and boys stretched away from him, each one wearing a glowing mask, each face overlaid by the features of an ancestor from the remote past. Would they all now march away to the wedding feast and leave him here? Then the priest turned to him and spoke in an apologetic tone.

  “Dagr, born of Hradulf’s flesh, you are kin and you have the right to bear a mask at this ceremony. I regret that I can’t offer you one that still lives; but you shall wear a mask. Borrow the face of an ancestor, child of Hradulf, and wear it with pride.”

  The priest gestured at the shelves and their darkened masks: it seemed Dagr was allowed to choose whichever worthless relic he wanted.

  He took two steps forward, reached out without looking. His hand closed on a cool hard rim, and he drew the mask from the stand.

  It wasn’t like the others; it looked heavier, thicker, and incomplete, ending just below the cheekbones. The strap was woven through with metal wires, rust coloured.

  Dagr started to put it back, to pick another one, but already the priest had taken it from his hand and was stretching the strap over his head. One of the wires had broken; Dagr felt a prickling point score his scalp, then his temple. He winced, but kept from yelping; pain was something a grown man must ignore.

  With a sharp tug, the priest drew the strap tight; Dagr felt the rim of the mask almost biting into his flesh, but after a second or two the discomfort eased as the mask settled.

  “We don’t know the name of the ancestor whose mask you bear, Dagr,” said Pater Kolgrim, inflicting the final indignity. “But you will be honoured just the same.”

  Thus coaxed, Dagr could not refuse to parrot the line in turn. “I will be honoured to wear the face of—of my ancestor,” he murmured. Someone snickered derisively; Ormolf, by the deep tone. Dagr kept his face serene with an effort.

  Then Pater Kolgrim bade them all make a quarter turn and file out of the room. Dagr was at the tail of the procession. Pater Kolgrim was behind him while he snapped the padlock shut, then hurried back to the front of the line to lead them to the great hall.

  By this time the doors had been thrown open, and people had crowded in. A central aisle remained cleared. The group had reached a rear door of the hall; Pater Kolgrim told them to enter and arrange themselves at the head of the hall, in the same order as they were now; then he absented himself.

  Had Dagr been at the head of the column, he might have hesitated at this point. But Ormolf immediately strode through the door, and the others perforce followed.

  Voices murmured as they entered. Here were the ancestors of the Hold, come to witness Osfrid’s union with Lyuvina! Patrekr, Avarr-Ram, Galinn . . . and one unnamed, dead mask at the end of the line. Glancing to the sides, Dagr saw musicians with their instruments at the ready, a huddle of women in finery, even Hrothmarr’s widow, sunken cheeked and bowed like a sick tree, her milky eyes three-quarters blind.

  The bearers of the ancestors’ masks ranged themselves in order of status. Just beyond Dagr’s position at the end of the line, the powerful families of the Hold stood in their place. He caught more than a few glances from them, heavy with contempt, but also with jealousy. He might be least of the hetman’s kin, but still he stood in front of all of them, in a post none of them could claim. Dagr repressed the cringing he would otherwise have shown and stared straight ahead with at least the appearance of impassibility. The broken wire from the mask had dug a furrow in the skin of his temple, which sometimes itched or burned.

  There was a rustle of robes. Pater Kolgrim had at long la
st emerged through the door the boys had passed through earlier. The musicians had been playing soft anticipatory chords; now they struck up a stately march as the bride and groom appeared. Osfrid first, walking with Hradulf the length of the hall. Dagr remained at attention but could not prevent his eyes from trying to meet those of the hetman, his father. Hradulf’s body was still hale, though his face was that of an ageing man: the skin ravined, the eyebrows graying under a skull gone nearly bald. He spared one glance for his bastard, in which Dagr read neither approval nor reproach.

  Once Osfrid stood before the priest, it was Lyuvina’s turn to approach. Everyone stared at her as she passed by, the veil she wore hiding nothing of her body. She had firm ripe breasts with tawny nipples; the sight of the carefully trimmed triangle of her crotch made Dagr’s mouth go dry. Her arms were lithe, perhaps a bit too delicate. Her legs were heavier, but still well formed. The right one was shorter than the left, so that the girl limped a bit. Yet she was able to turn this almost to an advantage, accentuating the sway of her hips to camouflage the flaw in her walk.

  She rejoined her husband-to-be. The priest spoke loudly. “You have all seen the woman Lyuvina who comes to be wedded to Osfrid Hradulfsson. If anyone present knows of some reason why these two should not breed, let him speak now or forever hold his silence.”

  There was no challenge—no one would have dared challenge Osfrid’s chosen if she’d been a four-breasted clubfoot. One of the maids of honour wrapped Lyuvina in her white cloak then proffered a pair of woolen slippers to shield the bride’s bare feet from the cold floor.

  With Lyuvina’s veiling, the fever that had been tormenting Dagr fell abruptly. He had safeguarded the sight of her in his memory, but for now it had become meaningless. This was his future sister-in-law who stood to his right as the priest continued the wedding ritual, no longer the girl she had been a moment ago. The will of God changed all things.

  It might have been the mask on his face, or the need to breathe through his mouth because his nose was pinched uncomfortably; he felt hot, tired, ill at ease in his own flesh. Dagr tried to stand straighter, though he felt as if his spine was already arched too far back. He shifted his shoulders as discreetly as he could under the house coat, to no avail. Nothing eased his discomfort.

  Pater Kolgrim’s voice drones on and on, speaking the old-fashioned words of the rite in oddly parsed sentences. Yet the ceremony’s meaning could hardly be more clear: Man, in God’s name, I give you this woman to bear your offspring. Treat her well, and in return she will obey you unto death.

  Dagr will never hear those words spoken to him; not unless Hradulf were to die, and Osfrid after him, and Ormolf. Then, perhaps, Dagr might see his status rise high enough to marry. But that won’t ever happen. He won’t be able to sire offspring, but he doesn’t care about that. He just wonders if one day he’ll be able to know a woman’s flesh, or if he’ll have to love his hand for the rest of his life. At the thought, a pang of anger clenches his heart, and he steers his mind away, striving for calm. Forget all that, focus on the here and now. See how strange are the lights of the hall, viewed through the mask: they are surrounded by straight rainbows, four horns of banded light for each ceiling lamp, and one such quartet, though fainter, for every candle. Come to think of it, the people look less substantial than the lights; almost as if they were ghosts, figures from a distant time. This thought is both amusing and frightening, but that’s better than being angry. He wishes he could catch a glimpse of Griss, but the boy must be so far back in the crowd as to be invisible.

  Instead, Dagr turns his gaze to the right, to the ceremony passing ponderously through its phases. Now Osfrid is raising the cup to his bride’s lips and she is sipping with her eyes closed, the contents leaving a ruby stain around her mouth.

  Pater Kolgrim continues with the rite, stammering a few times. At long last he intones the final call and Lyuvina lifts the veil from her face, to be kissed by her groom. Their faces meet, and it is like a picture in an old book; Dagr’s heart almost breaks with longing.

  There is cheering and clapping, then the screech of tables being brought into position for the feasting. Presently the bridal table has been brought to the head of the hall, draped in white cloth almost to the ground. Chairs are set all along it. Osfrid and his bride at one end, then Hradulf, Pater Kolgrim, then Ormolf and Oddr, and then the four nephews, and finally Dagr is allowed to sit.

  People all down the hall are sitting down—some vicious struggles are waged for the best places, disguised as exchanges of pleasantries. More people are forced to leave the hall for lack of room, though presumably they will partake of some of the feast. Hradulf rises to his feet and praises his son for long minutes, to general approval. The bride is very pink in the face—maybe it is the contrast with the white of her dress, so bright that in Dagr’s vision it is fringed with colours. Once the hetman has finished his speech, Osfrid himself rises to his feet. Dagr sighs inwardly, but his half-brother’s speech is mercifully brief.

  Eventually cooks bring out the dishes: boiled grain, breads, the last of the summer vegetables. One special dish is brought to the head table: roasted meat heaped on a bed of rice and leeks. The aroma is heavenly, as if the meat were fresh. Dagr’s mouth waters; but he won’t be getting a taste any time soon. First, Osfrid must serve himself, which he does, gathering several slices, then loading his bride’s plate with more. The hetman is next. Pater Kolgrim shakes his head, his mouth pursed tightly, and watches the dish pass to his left. Ormolf holds the dish in his hands for a moment, then looks to his left, along the table, directly to Dagr, and takes a goodly portion of what is left. The plate passes down the table slowly; and by the time it reaches Dagr, only one half-wilted leek is left, stained with brown juices.

  Dagr takes a deep breath, lifts his gaze. Ormolf is talking loudly to Lyuvina and shows him nothing but the back of his head, barred with the mask’s strap. Beyond Ormolf, Pater Kolgrim looks at Dagr, an odd, imploring expression on his face. Urging Dagr to calm, no doubt. And normally there would be no need for the warning. He is used to this kind of treatment; why should Osfrid’s wedding be any different? He sits at the head table; what does it matter that none of the meat has reached him?

  And yet something in him is woken to fury. He deserves better than this. Who do they think he is? The thought roars through his head like wind whistling through a breach in an outer wall. He knows the answer, of course: he is only Dagr, no matter the mask of the ancestor he wears. . . . Something odd strikes him then, as he beholds the faces all in a row up the table: though the masks shed a glow, the faces behind the visors are perfectly ordinary. The lineaments of the ancestors Patrekr, Avarr-Ram, Galinn, are absent from the boys’ faces.

  The dish lies still before Dagr’s own plate, steaming in the cool air, little hills of rice scattered across its surface. A servant hovers near Dagr’s elbow. Dagr grabs the dish and hands it to the servant. Pater Kolgrim won’t be the only one to disdain the food. At least there is drink: a filled mug of beer has been set before him. Dagr brings the mug to his lips and takes a huge slug. The alcohol makes his throat tighten at first, then ignites something at the core of his body. As the assembled host begins to eat, amidst cheers and wishes for health, Dagr quaffs more of the beer. Soon the mug is empty and he holds it out for refilling.

  The burn intensifies as Dagr drinks on; when he feels pressure in his belly, he relieves it with a long belch. His half-cousins look at him, scandalized. They haven’t more than moistened their lips at their own mugs. Stupid little boys.

  Dagr is breathing fast, and the rainbows around the light sources spin when he turns his head. There is a candle shining close to his face, the flame flickering and dancing, red green blue glories dancing fourfold around it. . . .

  A hole opens in the heart of the candle flame, a tiny dot of blackness that stretches like a wound in the skin. A tiny, tiny woman moves within the hole, and her eyes are pits of blackness in her black
face. Dagr feels himself breathing, floating in the air, rainbows crowding at the edge of his vision while his eyes focus on the spot of darkness.

  A wind is blowing the woman’s black hair about. Her mouth opens and he hears her voice, a whisper from the other end of a tunnel ten leagues long.

  “Do not be afraid,” she says. “I have passed through the sun, and this is why I am black.”

  He can smell her now, a smell of burning, as if the very air were aflame. She turns, she turns to face him fully, and he realizes she has wings, as black as the rest of her.

  “Do not be afraid,” she repeats, “but love me with all your heart. I have put the veil of abysses from my face. Open the gate to me, in the name of the great void.”

  Dagr fights to tear himself away from the vision; he reaches out a hand and closes finger and thumb on the candle flame. His ungloved fingertips are stung by the heat; he brings his hand back reflexively, cradles it in the pit of his stomach. The black hole has closed with the dying of the flame; only a ribbon of smoke coils toward the everburning ceiling lights. Dagr thinks to smell the tang of his own roasted flesh in it.

  His behaviour had attracted attention; Oddr was peering at him with a frown, and even sweet Lyuvina of the firm breasts had directed her gaze to Dagr.

  As if in answer to the pressure of their sight, he rose to his feet, held up his mug. “I haven’t had a chance to speak yet,” he said in an uncertain voice. “To wish my brother good fortune, and happiness in his marriage, and many sons . . . all the things I’ll never see the colour of, in short!”

  Osfrid’s face had shown a tolerant smile at the beginning of Dagr’s outburst; with the last sentence his mouth grew tight-lipped. Dagr felt chastised, reproached beyond anything his father the hetman could mete out. And yet he went on.