The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 7

by Jonathan Strahan

  Though the thing she had seen was nothing like any troll she had read of or imagined, the identification came to her with complete assurance. Furthermore there would be a lair in the tarn, a cave with an underwater entrance. Something like that was necessary anyway, if Dick was to be still alive when she found him. He wouldn’t survive more than another few minutes underwater. Where? Not where she stood, on what seemed almost a natural earth dam holding the tarn in against the hillside; but over to her right and beyond, where the higher ground reached the water, was a line of low cliffs.

  She stared towards them. There! Close in below the dark rocks, more to her right than straight across, the utterly still surface was broken by a sudden ripple and swirl, much like a large fish might make, rising almost to the surface to take a fly and then changing its mind and twisting suddenly back. There was a dip in the cliff just this side of the place. Using that as a landmark she jogged round the edge of the tarn, deliberately choosing a pace that wouldn’t instantly run her out of breath again. She dived in where the cliffs began and swam on, still well below a racing speed. The water was degrees colder than that of the river below. At the point she had marked, she stopped, gulped air, kicked herself upwards, and jackknifed into a dive. In the increasing dimness the cliff ran on down, still almost sheer. A good twenty feet below the surface she reached a floor of black, peaty ooze. She turned to her left, and just before her breath gave out glimpsed ahead of her a darker patch on the vertical rock. Madness to try it now.

  She pumped herself to the surface and trod water, gasping for air. As soon as she dared she dived again. Yes, an opening in the rock, a triangular cranny like the entrance to a tent. Counting the seconds she swam straight into the darkness, and on through the blind black water. The tunnel seemed to run almost straight, and she could feel her way by the touch of her fingers against the rock on either side. Sometimes when all the family had been swimming together, they used to have timed contests to see who could stay under water longest. In those days she could last a minute and a half, but not swimming vigorously as she was now. Call it a minute, she thought, or a bit over. It would be quicker coming out. Forty seconds in, then… She reached the moment, and swam on.

  At fifty-five, well past the point where there was any hope in turning back, she saw a change in the darkness ahead. At sixty the change was faint light. At sixty-eight she broke the surface. Retching for air she stared around.

  The light was daylight of a sort, seeping in through a narrow crack overhead. It wasn’t a light to see by, no better than might have been shed at night in the open by a half moon behind a layer of cloud. She guessed she must be in some kind of cavern, part of the fault that Dick had talked about, perhaps, but in the dimness she could make out neither walls nor roof. She swam forward a few strokes and her feet touched bottom, a shelving rock ledge. As she climbed from the water the only sounds in the stillness were the heaving of her own breath and the patter of drops falling from her hair and limbs, and their fainter echoes.

  Not six feet in front of her, a voice spoke. Not a human voice, a soft, deep, booming sound, a drum note that boomed back at her from the cave walls. But its note of questioning surprise told her that it was articulate speech. The thing in the darkness repeated the sound with a different intonation, this time confirming what it had seen. A single word. The strangeness of the voice blurred the two syllables, but she could hear they had not been English. An echo in her mind repeated the sound, and she knew what the thing had said.

  “Woman? ” And then, “Yes, a woman.”

  “Who’s there? ” she whispered.

  “I do not tell my name,” said the voice.

  “Troll,” she said.

  “Rock-child,” said the voice, correcting her without anger.

  Given its voice to focus on she could make the creature out now, a vague dark mass about six feet from her. Its head seemed to be about level with her own, or a little higher, so she guessed it might be squatting, toad-like, on its haunches just above the waterline. It still hadn’t crossed her mind to be afraid, but now a shudder of cold shook her body, and she realized how far she had chilled through, and how little reserve of strength she had left to reheat herself.

  “Where is my husband? ” she said. “You took him. Give him to me.”

  “He is here.”

  The creature moved, a sudden sideways shuffle, revealing a paler shape that had lain behind it. Mari waded forward, stumbled up the slope and knelt, feeling for Dick with numbed hands. He was lying face down on the rock so she heaved him over, felt for his face, and laid her ear against his mouth. Nothing. Her fingers were too frozen to find his pulse, but he too seemed to be deathly cold. She straddled his body and started to pump at his chest.

  “What do you do, woman? ” said the troll.

  “I bring his breath back,” she panted. “Else he dies.”

  “He sleeps,” said the troll, uninterested.

  “Rock-child,” she said, gasping the words out between pumps, “…we are… sun things… Sun’s heat… gives us life… Cold

  long… we die…”

  She stopped pumping, knelt by Dick’s head, pinched his nose, and forced her breath between his lips. She backed off, let the lungs collapse, and tried again. And again. The effort was warming her, but she had little more to give. Even with her full strength, she wouldn’t have been able to keep this up for more than a minute or two. She straddled Dick’s body again and resumed pumping.

  “Go to the sun, then,” said the troll.

  “I must take… my husband… under the water… Too

  far… we die… Oh, troll… rock-child… help me… I am of… your blood.”

  Desperate, she flung herself round to breathe again into Dick’s mouth. Nothing. Nothing.

  A huge, cold hand gripped her shoulder and hauled her upright. It turned her and she found herself facing the creature, held by both shoulders, looking up at the enormous head. The light seemed stronger now. Perhaps the sun had risen far enough to shine further into the opening, but she could make out the wide-set bulbous eyes and the V-shaped mouth that seemed to split the face from side to side.

  “My blood, sun-child? ” boomed the troll.

  “It’s a story in my family,” she gabbled, desperate to get back to Dick, but at the same time not to waste this first apparent wakening of the creature’s interest. “One of my forefathers—his daughter was taken by a troll…” She raced through the first half of the tale… No, not the stupid Christian end—that wouldn’t mean anything to it. On impulse, she switched to the fragments that could be gleaned from the Gelfunsaga—the inconclusive contest in the cave, the oath-taking—and wrenched herself away, but then crumpled to the floor. She managed to crawl back to Dick but couldn’t raise herself to start the resuscitation again. She collapsed against him and lay there.

  A voice was booming overhead. With a huge effort she concentrated on the syllables.

  “Child of my blood, rock-born and sun-born, I give you your man back. Go now to your place. Wait there. The sun must set. I will bring him.”

  She managed to raise her head.

  “Rock-child,” she sighed. “I am too weary. I cannot swim so far. I cannot hold in my breath so long beneath the water.”

  She felt herself being turned over and lifted. With limp muscles she struggled against the creature’s grip.

  “My man will die,” she protested. “It is too cold in this place.”

  “Woman, we are oath-bound,” said the creature. “He will live. I will bring him this dusk. Now, breathe deep.”

  She closed her eyes as it carried her into the water, and concentrated on making her breath last as long as possible. As soon as they were under the surface it shifted her to beneath its left arm so that her body could trail against its own. She could feel the steady driving pulse of its hind limbs, and tell from the flow of the water against her skin that they were moving faster than any human swimmer could have done. It wasn’t long before th
e grip changed again, held her beneath the arms, pushed her forward and let go. As she opened her eyes she was already swimming.

  There was light ahead. She was at the tunnel mouth. Weakly she swam on and up to the silvery surface.

  She made it to the shore beyond the cliffs and climbed out, shuddering, too weak to stand. But the sun was warm enough now to be some use, and life began to come back to her as she crawled round the edge of the tarn. By the time she reached the outflow she could just about totter to her feet. Painfully she climbed down the way she had come, first across the grassy slope by the waterfall and then in the stream bed. By the time she reached the pool at the bottom she could feel her skin beginning to scorch. She slid into the water, and barely bothering to swim let the current carry her home.

  Already she had decided there was nothing she could do except trust the creature and wait till nightfall. No point in going for help, to the police, to the water-bailie. How could she hope to persuade them that though Dick had fallen into the river just outside the house the place to look for him was in the tarn halfway up the hill? But at least she could get herself warm, and then fed, and rested. She went to the bathroom and turned on the shower. As the kindly heat seeped into her she realized there was indeed something she could do.

  There was no instant hurry. Doctor Tharlsen had set times for all he did. He wouldn’t look at his email until Helge brought in his luncheon tray. Mari went into the kitchen, turned on the kettle, made herself a pot of tea and a Marmite sandwich, and carried them into her desk. Her patient window cleaner was still repetitively saving her screen. “Thanks,” she whispered, as always, when the touch of her hand on the mouse made him vanish.

  She had post, but not from Doctor Tharlsen. Monday, he’d said. She downloaded, not bothering to read more than the subject headings, wrote out her brief message and sent it off. Then she finished her sandwich, set the alarm, and lay down on the bed, not knowing whether she would sleep or not. She did so, almost instantly, and forgot everything.

  It came back the moment the alarm went. She went at once to the PC. While she waited for the server to connect she looked, just as she had done that morning, out of the window. Noon blazed down on the moving river. The dinghy bobbled, empty, on its rope—without Dick’s weight in it the current flowed smoothly beneath it and it hadn’t shifted more than a few paces downstream. She herself felt like that, empty, weightless, with a powerful current sweeping by and herself unable to do more than float on its surface, waiting, waiting…

  The server connected. Yes, she had post. Only the line of her address, and the note that there was an attachment. Her fingers moved steadily over the keys, and the text came up. Runes, of course, four four-line verses, one more line of verse and three of prose. She started to read, translating in her head as she went.

  Then spoke Raggir, the rock-born marvel,

  “No longer yours, O Jarl, is the woman.

  “Mine I have made her in my mountain hall.

  “A dark cave her body. There breeds my son.”

  Answered Gelfun, “Goblin, sun-fearer,

  “From me you take a treasure of amber.

  “No gold in my hoard is half so precious.

  “Let her say farewell, have a father’s blessing.”

  At his knee the woman knelt for his hand.

  By the hair he grabbed her, grasped the bright ringlets,

  Fiercely lifted her, laid her against him.

  Lean at her neck his knife glinted.

  Then said Gelfun, grimly mocking,

  “Does she die here, demon? Dies your son also.

  “Does she come with me from the mid-earth darkness

  “To bear your son in the sweet daylight?”

  Raggir the rock-born roared in his anger…

  This is as much as I am sure of. The actual oaths are still mainly conjectures, too much so for me even to guess at their gist. Let me know if you need them also. It will take a while to transcribe into a form you can make any kind of sense out of. I must go out now. If you are free this evening, call me and tell me what this is about. I am troubled for you.

  “E.L.T.

  Mari turned away, weeping. She longed to speak to him. He wouldn’t doubt her. There was no one else of whom she could say that, not even her own family. She told herself she must get her strength back, so made lunch of a sort and forced it down, but this time couldn’t sleep, and after a while got up and dusted and cleaned the bedroom and living room and scrubbed the kitchen floor and polished Dick’s shoes and her own high boots, painfully hauling the dreadful minutes by. As she worked she wondered what she was going to tell people if the creature didn’t keep its promise. That Dick had gone fishing somewhere out of sight and not come back in the evening? By now she would have started to search, surely. It was only a half mile of river. His waders were still in the house. If he’d fallen in from the bank he’d have left some trace, his net, gaff, creel… Her mind wouldn’t stick to the problem. The creature kept dragging it back to the cave.

  She was unable to eat any supper. It was still too warm an evening for anything but shorts and a loose blouse, so as soon as the sun slid below the ridge opposite she smeared herself with mosquito repellent and went out and sat on the bank and waited. A little downstream the stupid dinghy bobbled at the end of its rope. It crossed her mind to fetch it ashore, but that would mean putting the mosquito cream on again, so she left it. She assumed that the creature would carry Dick back as it had taken him, swimming down the river, and bring him ashore where she sat. The current moved soundlessly past, its surface sometimes heart-stoppingly broken by the rise of a fish. Each time, as the swirl broke the smoothness, she thought it was the creature beginning to surface, and then knew that it wasn’t. Hope faded with the fading light. It was almost dark when she heard the click of a dislodged pebble, and turned and saw Dick stumbling towards her down the track from the top of the valley.

  She rose and ran up the bank and flung her arms round him.

  “Oh, darling,” she whispered.

  He didn’t reply, but hugged her clumsily in return. He seemed utterly dazed, unsure where he was, who she was. He found his way beneath her blouse, and his hands began to explore her back as if for the first time. They were stone cold, and her body refused to respond. She had to will herself not to shrink from his touch, and then to answer his caress. Through the fabric of his shirt she could feel the chill of his body. Stone cold. She slid her fingers up, as always when they started an embrace, to the inner edge of his right shoulder blade, and found the little nodule, like an old scar, where the skin dipped towards the spine. It was a birth defect, apparently, that ran in his family. Some rearrangement of the nerves beneath made it supersensitive to touch, causing him to sigh and half shrug the shoulder as she stroked it. Not now. Too stone cold, even for that.

  Stone cold. He shouldn’t be alive, or at least in a coma. Stone.

  “Rock-born,” she whispered. And then, continuing the guess, “Raggir.”

  His hands stopped moving. She loosed her hold on him, took him by the elbows, and pushed herself away. He didn’t resist.

  “Where is my husband? ” she asked softly.

  “He is here also.”

  It was Dick’s voice, but not a language Dick knew. She wasn’t surprised, or angry, or frightened. Her mind seemed utterly clear. There was still one hope only, and she knew how she must achieve it.

  “No,” she said again. “I must have my husband. Him only. Listen, Raggir, rock-born, and I will tell you a tale. Long ago, in a country across the sea, you took a woman to your cave. She was Gelfun’s daughter. Gelfun came to your cave. You said, ‘This woman is mine now. She carries my son in her womb.’ Gelfun took her. He put his knife to her throat. He said, ‘Give her back to me or I kill her, Then your son dies also. But let me take her, and I will raise your son as mine.’ You and he swore oaths and made it so. Now I, Mari, of the lineage of Gelfun, say this. Take me, rock-born, by guile or by force, put your seed into
me, and I will kill myself, as Gelfun would have killed his own daughter. Then you will lose both your new child and your old child, by whom your blood is in me. But give me back my husband, him alone, him living, and I will give you a gift as great to you.”

  He stood for a while, simply looking at her in the late twilight.

  “Do you drive me from my place, as Gelfun drove me? ” he asked. “He would have brought an army of men, to dig out the rocks, to drain my lake away, to beset my cave and take me and bind me with chains and drag me into the sun. I am the last of my kind. Therefore I took the ship he gave me and came to this land. Long I lived sadly before I found my cave. I would not live so again.”

  “This is my gift to you,” said Mari, and explained to him as best she could about the hydroelectric scheme. He didn’t seem to find it strange.

  “It is in my husband’s hands,” she finished. “At his word it will be done or not done. Therefore he must live, so that I may persuade him.”

  “Unfasten the boat,” he said. “Take it to the rock in the middle of the river. Wait there.”

  He turned and walked down the bank. At the river’s edge he leaped, frog-fashion, into the water.

  Mari stripped off and followed. Reaching the dinghy she used the anchor rope to haul herself down to the river bed, untied the anchor rock by feel, and surfaced gasping. Then she turned on her back and kicked across the current to the stiller water close by the rock shelf. Once there she could take it more easily, simply maintaining her position. The first she knew of the creature’s return was the boom of its voice close behind her.