11
The ship that was to take them across the water wallowed beside a sturdy pier jutting out from the shore. Perhaps seventy feet long and thirty wide, the ferry looked like a longship grown fat and lazy with easy living, a sleek dragon head attached to the body of a walrus. The ship's sail was furled; the sixteen pairs of oars along its wooden sides would power it.
A long, slow crossing then, unless the wind picked up. Dull, but then, excitement was the last thing Jean wanted.
Then again, perhaps he was being unduly optimistic. Even as they readied the ship, all the crewmen wore axes, swords, and long daggers strapped to their sides, and many carried shields. Most wore helmets and some kind of armor, either the dull grey alloy chain or boiled leather. Spears bristled along the inside rails of the ship within easy reach of every rower's bench.
With one of the crew leading Jacques behind them, Jean and Opa walked to the end of the pier and down a ramp onto the boat. Opa led Jean by his remaining hand with an attitude of protective solicitude, as though he were the adult and Jean the child placed in his care.
As Jean settled onto a bench against the rail in the bow of the ship, the boy tucked Jean's cloak over his shoulders to defend him from imaginary chills and folded the edges over his lap. Only then did he seat himself, huddling close against Jean's side and watching the crew with wary interest.
Jean wondered dully at the boy's devotion. Children were inexplicable little creatures, with thoughts and passions all their own and reasoning that adults could never hope to grasp. Certainly little Opa seemed determined to cling as fiercely to Jean now as he had in the river.
If the boy was concerned about what would happen to them both on the morrow, or a week from now, he gave no sign of it. Perhaps he was content simply to have a surrogate parent again, for however long it lasted.
An orphan, a lost cripple, and a horse hardly seemed a desirable family to Jean, but it seemed the choice was no longer his to make. He sighed and let his eyes drift over his surroundings.
The only other passenger, an old man as heavily armed and armored as the crew, sat in a chair on a raised platform just behind the figurehead, above the passenger benches where Jean sat, which allowed him to view the entire ship. He held a great spear across his knees like a king's scepter. He eyed Jean and the boy but said nothing.
Jean knew he should be taking a greater interest in the proceedings, but he felt mired in lethargy, detached from the world around him and at the same time achingly fragile. Solvig had warned him that it would be days before he was completely well, but he doubted that he would ever fully recover. The loss of his arm filled his awareness and devoured his energy, leaving him feeling small and cold.
He looked around at the expanse of water, searing blue under the clear skies, and wondered if they would survive the crossing, or if some other horror would rise up from the deep and devour them all. The thought raised no great alarm.
Harek, the acting captain and son of Halfdan Langskeid, paused by Jean's bench. He was a tall, middle-aged man with a thick braid of blond hair that fell to his waist, a beard as red as Thor's, and a good-natured expression. "It'll start out a bit rough," he warned genially, "but I'm expecting a breeze farther out. Once we hoist the sail, it'll smooth out. Don't worry about your horse; I have a man stationed back there with him."
He nodded toward the stern, and Jean looked back to where Jacques stood. The stern had been adapted for holding livestock. Lower than the rest of the boat by perhaps three feet, it was surrounded by a sturdy rail, to which Jacques was tied. The horse was clearly visible and could see all around, but he was unable to get in the way of the crew.
A brawny man in a shirt of somewhat tattered chain stood beside the pit, drinking out of a huge horn. Like most of his fellows, he was blond and bearded, though the face beneath his surprisingly short beard was smooth-skinned and boyish. A slight tilt in his stance told Jean he'd had more than the one hornful already.
The man saw Harek's look and waved, a wide grin on his jovial face. Opa started to wave back, but jerked his arm down to his side and huddled more closely against Jean.
Harek muttered under his breath something that might have been an oath, then cleared his throat. "Sven has worked with horses in the past. He's more reliable than he looks."
Jean roused himself to give Opa an awkward pat, and managed a slight smile of thanks for Harek. "I'm sure he will be fine. Jacques — my horse — is usually well-behaved."
Harek nodded again. "Good, that's good."
With a parting smile, he strode down the length of the ship between the benches where the men were readying their oars, ordering the crew about with cheerful energy.
Jean noticed that although Harek gave the orders, it was to the old man the others looked as they obeyed.
When everyone was in place, Harek turned to the old man and called something in the common tongue of Kalmar, which Jean did not know. The old man nodded his head, and Harek turned back to the crew and gave the order to cast off. His men hastened to untie the ropes from the moorings, dug their oars into the water, and heaved.
The boat lurched heavily, and Opa seized Jean's arm in sudden nervousness. Jean gave him a reassuring smile, gripping the edge of the bench with his hand. The boat lurched again at the second stroke, but by the third the boat had picked up a little headway and smoothed out as Harek called the rhythm of the oars.
Once the ride grew steadier, Jean glanced up at the old man, who sat in silence overlooking them all. This must be Halfdan Langskeid, the Ferryman.
Doubtless a show of respect was in order. Jean forced himself to bow from his seat. The old man's return gaze was sober, almost stern, but he nodded in reply. Duty done, Jean closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the railing, listening to the men chant as they rowed, and letting the smell of the sea fill his lungs.
There was nothing to do now but endure the voyage and pray, against all prior experience, that in Tir he would find an end to his quest and cause to hope for something more.
Solvig had said there were Mystics who could replace his arm. If she had never met one, well, perhaps the Temple of Ohma, of which he had heard so much, knew where one could be found, or could provide some other answer. Certainly he'd been led to believe that it could provide an answer for everything else.
He snorted. And just as though he were the hero of some mythical tale, everything would turn out all right in the end and magic could solve any problem. It was surely the act of a fool to cling to false hope in the face of all reason.
Yet what other hope had he?
"Strap a shield to it and you'll still be able to fight. It's not as though the dragon bit your legs off."
Jean's eyes flew open as the gruff voice intruded on his dark musing. The words had been in English, and for a moment Jean doubted he understood correctly. He sat up straight and looked around.
Halfdan Langskeid was looking at him, bushy brows lowered over piercing blue eyes. Jean stared back, momentarily struck dumb. How had the old man known what he was thinking? And how on earth was he to respond to that? He didn't feel like talking at all, let alone engaging in conversation with a total stranger, and especially not about his lost arm.
But to return rudeness for rudeness was to be as ill-bred as the old man. "I beg your pardon?"
Halfdan indicated Jean's missing arm with a nod. "You need some sort of prop — what you have isn't long enough by itself — but I've had ceorls with one false arm, to which they strap a shield. Works just as well in a fight, and that's what matters. "His voice was rough, but there was strength in it. The Ferryman was still a force to be reckoned with.
Jean was painfully aware of Opa's sudden bright-eyed interest, and he silently cursed the old man's bluntness. He had no idea if Opa spoke anything but German, but it was not unlikely that he understood at least some English, and Jean did not enjoy having his weaknesses discussed. Especially not before the child. "I am sorry,"
he said smoothly, "but I am yet a little light-headed and not able to discuss my injury. Perhaps some other time."
The Ferryman ignored the hint and the sarcasm with which it was offered. "What other time? What you don't face will kill you from behind. I've been here for a long time, and I've learned that Tir na n'Og has no mercy on fools. I don't often offer my advice. You'd do well to listen."
"I—" Jean paused, torn between awakening outrage and his natural curiosity. "You were not born in this place?"
Halfdan Langskeid snorted. "I came to this land when I was younger than you are. Listen!" He leaned forward, eyes glittering with remembered glory. His voice deepened and took on a rolling cadence. "I followed Ragnar Lodbrok to Britannia. But he sent Olaf the Stout north to find more land, and I went with him. Six ships we had when the mists covered the water like Hel's cloak, and three when we found our way out of it and came to this place.
"The dragons found us first. Then the trolls, the ogres, the goblins, the lamia, and the other monsters of the dark and the far, wild places. Those of us that were left fled for our lives across the country with the Wild Hunt ever on our heels. This was before the time of Ohma, and the Folk hunted men like beasts."
Jean stared at him, a chill racing up his spine. "The Wild Hunt?"
The old man's mouth twisted, though whether with a smile or grimace, Jean could not tell. "When I was a child, the women told stories of the Great Hunt, the Wild Hunt; how the gods and their kin rode by the dark of the moon, and man was their prey. In the Outer lands, such hunts captured only the unwary, those who ignored the laws that keep one safe from magic and give man mastery of the world. But here—" He laughed, a grim sound. "Here, in their own land, the Folk are ruled by nothing but their own whim, and men are blown like leaves in the wind of their passing. The Hunt rode each night beneath the eternally full moon, and we died on the fangs of their beasts and the points of their spears."
He straightened, his hands tightening on the spear shaft. "Those of us who learned to escape the Hunt at night faced other hunters by day, for this land belongs to all manner of fell things. Now I am all that is left of that company."
He leaned forward again, and his voice dropped menacingly. "Remember well the tales of your skalds, for whatever walked in those songs walks here in flesh. And many hunger for the blood of man. Even Ohma could not change that."
"Ohma," Jean murmured, caught up despite himself. "Is Ohma the one for whom the Temple is named? Who is he?"
"She!" Halfdan huffed and sat up with a scowl, breaking his own spell. "Have you learned nothing since you came here? Ohma, the gods grant her glory, was born of the Folk, but she took pity on men. It was she who put a stop to the Hunt, changed the hearts of the Folk toward us. She gave us our cities, the Code by which we live. Learn what she left us, Outlander. It will keep you alive in this place."
He sat back, nodding toward the rest of the crew. "I've had five sons and three daughters. Strong and brave, all of them, though none was ever Chosen. All dead now, save Harek and Oswyna. They gave me sixty-three grandchildren, and uncountable great-grandchildren, and most of those are dead as well."
He was silent for a moment. Then he gave a heavy sigh, and his voice faded, lost its rolling power, and become once more the voice of an old man. "The young, they live by the Codes of Ohma. They've never known the time of the Hunt." He pinned Jean with a narrow-eyed glance. "But those of us born in the Outer lands have one advantage. Do you know what it is?"
Jean swallowed, mesmerized. "No."
Halfdan smiled grimly. "The Codes teach many things to help mankind live in peace with the Folk. Our children learn that their greatest hope is to be Chosen for a Triad; three heroes great in glory, but brief in life. A Triad's time is short and death is certain. Everyone knows this. Everyone believes this."
His voice dropped to a rumble. "But we who grew to manhood before the Codes — we don't believe it. We know survival is possible. And with survival comes triumph. Remember that, Outlander. You may become a thrall, but you don't have to die one."
Jean's hackles rose as an icy finger etched its way down his spine. There was a portent behind the Ferryman's words, some meaning he could not fully grasp, but that his spirit responded to with a thrill blended of fear and a fierce, secret pride.
He was trapped by that hard, blue stare, overwhelmed by the force of the old man's personality. He focused on the bushy white brows and craggy lines that surrounded those eyes and denied the youth in them.
He remembered some of the history of ancient Britain. If what Halfdan said was true, he had preceded Jean through the Mists by, not decades, but centuries.
Yet time had not entirely stood still for the seafarer; by his own account, he had entered Tir na n'Og a young man.
Jean leaned forward and fixed his gaze on the old Viking's face. "Halfdan Langskeid, you have lived here since your youth. You have faced these dangers, seen the gods and heroes of this land rise and fall, and legends live and die. In all your years, have you heard of a way back?"
Halfdan Langskeid did not answer for a long time, just studied Jean with the clear, blue eyes of a young man.
"I never had the chance to try," he answered finally. "And, of course, if anyone ever succeeded, how would I know? They'd be gone, wouldn't they? I do know that the Folk — the Greater ones that is — used to pass freely from one world to the other. Not so often of late, or so I hear. And I've heard things about the Gates." He waved a hand to indicate the horizon.
Jean realized he was holding his breath, and deliberately let it out before he spoke. "And what is it that you have heard?"
Halfdan adjusted his grip on his spear and thumped the butt down onto the wooden deck. "You need three things to leave this land. The first is courage; you have that, or you'd still have both arms and we'd be missing the boy. The second is magic. Difficult to obtain. Human Mystics don't have the power by themselves to open the great Gates, but I've heard there are items of power made by the Folk that a good Mystic can use to open the Gates and pass through."
Jean's lips were dry. He licked them. "And what is the third thing?"
The old man grinned. "Permission." He leaned back, laid his spear across his knees once more, and turned his stare out over the water. It was clear he had finished speaking and wanted no more conversation.
Jean opened his mouth, determined not to be daunted by the other's demeanor, but a tug on his cloak attracted his attention. He looked down at Opa. The boy's eyes glowed with excitement as he pointed out over the water.
"Uncle Jean," he cried, "Look! Look!"
Jean narrowed his eyes against the glare, not daring to release his grip from his seat to shade them. Something was stirring among the waves, and a moment later one of the crew gave a shout. His heart skipped a beat, but no one reached for a weapon.
Instead, Harek shouted and waved his arms at the disturbance. Jean sat up stiffly and stared as an arm lifted from the water and waved in reply. The signal, and the unknown being that sent it, were evidently welcome, for Harek turned back with a smile and bellowed an order at his crew.
The men grinned and shipped their oars, and the next minute they were scrambling all over the ship, yelling back and forth like children newly released to play. The ship lurched as the big sail billowed open to catch the freshening breeze.
Someone gave a cheerful whoop. The ship steadied, and Jean thought they were about to drift to a stop, but the men continued to shift the sail and gradually they began to move, gaining speed as they harnessed the wind.
Harek approached the bench, his weathered face creased in a broad grin. "The route's clear and there's a decent wind coming up. We'll reach Tir in less than an hour."
Jean glanced from him to the rolling sea. Nothing moved on the water but the foam that slid from the tips of the waves and tossed in the ship's wake. "What was it that waved from the water?"
H
arek shrugged. "Merfolk of some kind. We don't see them too often, and it's a good omen when we do. Whoever that was just told us that all's well. Every once in a while they let us know if there's anything dangerous out there.
"Mind you, this is a protected route," he added hastily, "but accidents happen, sometimes something slips through the wards."
Jean asked himself whether he really wanted to know more, but curiosity was too strong a habit. "Then, you are allied with these creatures of the sea?"
"Allied?" The notion seemed to surprise Harek. He scratched his head and glanced out at the water, where nothing broke the surface to hint at the strange life teeming below. "Well, no, not exactly…anywhere off the protected routes, they're as much a danger to us as anything else."
"But you say we are on a protected route," Jean said slowly, hoping Harek's understanding of the word was the same as his own.
"Aye." The blond man nodded. "There's ferry routes the Greater Fey granted to us humans a long time ago, so we can come and go from Tir. With all the things living in the sea, it's worth your life to try crossing anywhere else. But these routes are protected, so we're free to pass over the water."
He waved a hand out over the waves. "I don't know how they order these things, but there are magical wards and such that keep most of the really bad things clear of our ships as long as we follow the safe routes. The merfolk, when they give warning, are just respecting that."
A shout from the other end of the boat drew Harek's attention. Jean turned his head to look over the water, but he quickly lost interest in searching for movement as he caught sight of the island looming out of the water ahead.
Had it been there earlier? Surely he would have noticed it.
He glanced down at the child beside him, but Opa's attention was caught up in watching the crew scramble about on the rigging and deck like monkeys. Harek, his back turned to Jean and the boy, was likewise absorbed.
Jean cleared his throat. "Your pardon, Monsieur Harek, but I presume that the island ahead of us is our destination?"
Harek glanced over his shoulder at Jean, then past him. He nodded with an air of satisfaction. "Ah, good, the mist has cleared. Now you'll have a fine look at it; the fog hid it before. You can even see the Temple of Ohma, there at the top."
Jean went cold. "Fog? Mist? There is mist here?" He turned violently on the bench, bumping against the boy beside him. "We are not sailing into it, surely?"
Harek laughed. "Don't get in a lather, friend. It's gone now, but there was a fair sized bank of it hiding Tir this morning before we sailed. It was probably only ordinary fog; the Mists don't settle this far Inland too often."
Jean's eyes raked over the churning blue water and the towering, green-shrouded land rearing out of it. There was no trace of any fog, not that he could see, but the thought of being carried into it again was almost more than he could bear.
Harek spoke behind him again, his voice reassuring. "If it was still there, we wouldn't be going into it. I've been sailing these waters all my life, but I'm no fool. Be at ease. You're as safe on this ship as anywhere in Tir na n'Og, and a good deal safer than in most of it. Though perhaps you're safer than you think. To my way of thinking, you've led a charmed life, if what Solvig tells me is true."
Jean turned back to stare up at the sailor, silent with disbelief. He could not even contradict Harek; the other man's assertion was too absurd.
Harek read his look and grinned. "It's few enough of those who come from the Outer lands who make it this far. And you, all alone?" He shook his blond head. "You've the Fey's own luck, you have." His eyes dropped to the boy, then quickly away, and he turned back to his ship.
Jean's mouth opened, but he could think of nothing to say. It occurred to him that it was strange that both Harek and the Ferryman had known who he was, though he did not recall telling anyone in the village where he had come from. Had he babbled something in his delirium?
He became aware of Opa's worried stare, and looked down into the child's wide blue eyes. "They knew I am not your uncle," he said aloud, unthinking.
The boy gripped his arm tightly. "You are. You are my Uncle Jean. I belong with you." Dry-eyed, Opa stared up at him, his face tight and fierce with his need.
The boy's clasp on Jean's arm tightened directly around his heart. Jean swallowed, suddenly unable to speak. He freed his arm gently and put it around the child, pulling him close. After a moment, he found his voice. "Of course you do, Opa. That is why you are here, is it not?"
The boy said nothing, only burrowed close under Jean's arm. Jean looked up, blinking against the sudden sting in his eyes, and watched Tir draw closer. "Look, Opa. There it is. There is Tir, where we will find all our answers, yes? I am already asking for miracles; perhaps one more is not too much. Somehow, you will come with me — it is clear that God wills it so."
He felt the child stir, but he did not look away from the island. Tir was larger than he had expected. It spread across the horizon, crowned by a low mountain — or perhaps it was a very high hill.
"See, Opa," he said, nudging the boy, "how the city rises up all around the mountain? It looked like a great cake, does it not?"
Opa raised his head and eyed the island dubiously. "A cake?"
Perhaps the boy had never seen any great confections of the baker's art. But at this distance the city had the look of something made of spun sugar piled up, layer upon glistening white layer, and sprinkled with bright splotches of color as it spiraled its way up the hill that crowned the island.
Jean followed the concentric circles up to the peak, and his breath caught in his throat. "There," he breathed, "at the top. That must surely be the Temple of Ohma."
From this distance, it was impossible to make out any details or even the building's shape. Yet surely it must be enormous to dominate the hilltop as it did, for it covered the summit like a snowcap on a mountain. Sparkling white as a block of ice, it caught the sun and shimmered like cut crystal.
Opa tugged at his robe. Jean looked down and saw the child's eyes wide with awe, and perhaps a little fear. "Is that where we're going? Why?"
"Why?" Jean paused. There were suddenly too many things he wanted to say, and no way to explain them to a child. "So that I can learn how to go home."
"What is your home like?" Opa looked up, blinking against the light.
A lump threatened to close Jean's throat. He swallowed his way around it. "Listen, Opa. Where I come from, there are no Fey. There are forests, but only wolves and bear hunt in them, and they stay away from men. Deer drink from the springs, not unicorns. The beasts are only beasts, and wear no other shape."
He sighed and gazed out over the water, seeing the familiar, rolling fields of his childhood. "You will like my home, Opa. In Alsace, you will learn to speak French as well as German, and in summer you can fish in the rivers, or swim in them all you like, because there are no river dragons or merfolk. My mother and father will welcome you, and there will be many children for you to play with.
"The seasons pass one after another, and wherever you go they march in the same order and at the same time, so that folk can grow up and grow old together. There are no Mystics to make you say or do things you don't want to. You can grow up to be a soldier, a sailor, a smith, a baker, a farmer, a scholar, and you will never have to give it all up to serve an unknown master—"
He paused. That was not true, and however great a paradise Alsace loomed in his memory, he had no wish to mislead the boy. He had grown up surrounded by hunger, disease, and the devastation of war, even though his own family had largely escaped it.
He remembered chilblains, and mud, and the clinging filth of the city streets — things conspicuously absent in the land he had seen so far. How could he explain such things to Opa and make them seem less terrible than a fate ruled by magic and unseen, unknowable, un-human masters?
Opa looked puzzled. "Then how are
Triads chosen?"
"There are no Triads, either. Men serve God and their rightful lords."
"So do the Triads."
Jean glanced around, but neither Harek nor any of his men were close by. "No, Opa," he said quietly. "They serve the fairy folk, who have no souls as men do. They are lost to God."
A pang went through him as he spoke, but he dismissed it irritably. Here, the local folk might have achieved a kind of truce with them, but back home, the fairy folk had long been declared by the Church to be children of the dark at best, and aspects of Satan himself at worst — assuming they existed there at all.
Unicorns and their ilk aside, Jean had seen little to convince him otherwise.
Opa looked uneasy. "It is God's will for men to serve the Fey. So that we may learn from them and better ourselves. So that we may learn from one another. That's what Ohma said."
Jean stared at him, appalled. He sought words that might make a child of Opa's tender years understand how wrong it was, how unnatural, that the old gods, these ancient and powerful spirits, should once more be put above Man. "Child, we cannot follow the fairy folk. They are not of God. They do not know God. We do."
"But they are, they do, too," the boy insisted, "Ohma said so." He straightened, frowning in concentration, and spoke more loudly, stumbling over the words as though struggling to remember them. "The Fey are the cousins of Men, and we must stand together before God in one house."
His voice dropped self-consciously. "That's what Ohma said. And that we are the mirrors the Fey must use to see themselves, and…" He paused, momentarily at a loss. "And the same thing for us. Or something like that. I don't remember, but Mother said so, and she knew the Code, all of Ohma's sayings and such things."
Jean stared down at the boy in his lap, then at the approaching land and up to the shining, white edifice at its peak, feeling as if the bench on which he sat had been kicked from beneath him. The last thing he had ever expected was to find something familiar in Tir na n'Og, however strangely distorted, as if in the rippled surface of a flawed mirror.
Could it be that this Ohma was more than a local legend; she had also been a teacher, a leader, a warrior of the spirit? A revered holy woman? Perhaps even…he shivered as a word sprang to his mind unbidden, chilling him with its import…saint-like. A saint? Was it possible?
He stared up at the Temple, shining in the sun like a beacon. Could it be? Was God's hand at work even in this place?
It seemed wrong, traitorous, almost blasphemous to even think such a thing, yet…surely with God all things were possible.
What more was there to the tale that he had yet to hear? Was he being given, at last, a sign by this child, the sign he had prayed for?
He forced a deep breath and released it before he could speak. "Ever since I came to this land, I have been asking God why. I thought perhaps it was punishment for failing a woman…a hero…who was, perhaps, something more. I did not see God's spirit in her until it was too late. Can it be that I am being taught to look more closely?"
The ship swung about and he saw a dock, crowded with people awaiting their arrival. Passengers for the trip back, he supposed.
For the first time, he felt a lifting of the numbness that had gripped him, and anticipation warmed his blood.
At last, the answers were close at hand. He could sense it.
God's breath whispered at the back of his neck and lifted the spray-dampened locks of his hair. Soon, it seemed to tell him.
Jean swallowed and looked up again at the Temple that crowned the hill.
Above him, the old man laughed once, then was still.