‘If I saw the world tree,’ said Adisla, holding Feileg’s hand and looking up at it, ‘this is how I think it would look.’
‘We are going into it,’ said Feileg.
‘How?’
‘We need to find a wolf trap,’ said Feileg.
Adisla thought of Vali, transformed and starving in that horrible cave. She let go of Feileg’s hand and said no more.
Feileg led the way up the mountain and Adisla’s wound began to pain her. Feileg saw her limping.
‘I can go on my own. It might be better like that.’
‘I’ll stay with you,’ said Adisla. ‘I am linked to you now. I’ll die in this wilderness without you.’
Feileg longed to hold her, to tell her how he felt about her, but he saw the resolution with which she drove herself on, her dedication to the prince, and he concentrated on picking a safe route for the climb.
The lower reaches were easy enough, snowy but not deadly cold as long as you kept moving or had fire. There was even a track winding across the mountain. Adisla had always imagined mountains as unrelenting climbs but this one had frequent breaks in the slope. They scrambled up scree or through fields of boulders, then along ridges where they seemed to go sideways rather than up. As they ascended, the path cut across slopes so steep that Adisla had to dig the butt end of the spear into the snow field to prevent herself sliding off the mountain. The light was bleak and drained of colour. Feileg stopped where the path gave out on a broad area of barren scree, a shoulder in a ridge that went up into ice. In the snowless lee of a big rock there were several pots on the ground, along with two or three bottles.
Feileg picked up a pot and sniffed it. ‘Butter,’ he said, ‘but licked clean by my brothers.’ He took up a bottle and removed the wooden bung.
‘Mead,’ he said. ‘This is as far as normal men can go without being certain of madness. It’s where offerings are left, but no one has collected them. Look!’
He pointed to the side of the track behind them. Adisla saw a dark area.
‘That was a wolf pit, to protect the offerings,’ said Feileg. ‘Men fear the witches, wolves do not. I snapped its spikes.’
‘How do they ever get anything before the wolves?’
‘They have servants, and they take it quickly,’ said Feileg.
Silently, a wolf had come to his shoulder. It nosed the ground before glancing at Feileg and going on. The animal had almost looked as if it was asking for instructions.
They went on, up, up and then down to a valley, up again and down into another valley. Here the land was barren and rocky. A river plunged almost as a waterfall off one side of the hill, tumbling into a wide pool before leading away down the mountain. The wolf with Feileg streaked across towards the pool. Just in front of it he stopped and picked something up in his mouth. Adisla and Feileg followed. The wolf had a human hand, a child’s, in its mouth.
Feileg breathed in. ‘It is near here,’ he said, ‘very near.’
They searched for two days but found nothing. There was little dry wood for the fire, food was running low and Feileg didn’t have time to catch anything - he was scouring the mountain, directing the wolves back and forth like a shepherd with his dogs. Adisla sat in the tent and tried to keep warm, resting her aching leg.
Feileg returned to the pool.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘The wolves can tell children go all over this mountain, but the tracks go over and over each other. They drink here and then go up there. Then they come back. Or so it seems.’
Adisla looked at the water. It was very clear and strangely not frozen. They were a good height above the valley floor, and even down there the river was solid and any pools were frozen a hard blue. This was still liquid.
‘There is no ice here,’ said Adisla.
Feileg looked at the water. That hadn’t occurred to him. He dipped his hand in. It wasn’t warm, but it was nowhere near as cold as it should have been. It was clear too, very clear.
‘Enchantment?’ he said.
‘Perhaps. Is this an entrance, do you think?’ she said.
‘Maybe one of them. There are supposed to be many, but neither I nor the wolves can find them.’
‘Will you go in?’
‘Yes.’ First he built a fire inside the Noaidi tent. Then he spent a few moments puffing and blowing beside the water, rubbing his hands and stamping his feet. Adisla wondered what he was doing and thought he looked far from confident. He went in up to his waist.
‘It is not cold,’ he said, ‘not at all.’
He went in deeper, made of few back and forth movements, tried to dive but immediately came back to the surface choking and coughing. Then he tried again, but with the same result.
‘Are you all right?’ said Adisla.
‘Yes.’ He was shaking. He steeled himself and put his face into the water. Then he did dive and didn’t appear for a couple of heartbeats. He came back up in a flurry of flapping arms and kicking legs, beating at the water with his hands and gulping down mouthfuls. Gasping, he managed to find his feet and stagger to the fire, where she cradled his shivering body in her arms as the Noaidi had done for her when she had gone over the side of the ship.
He regained his breath. ‘There is something down there, a lip on the bottom. It is possible to go underneath. I will try again.’
‘Wait a moment, you need to rest,’ she said.
She had never seen him look like this. For the first time since she had known him, the wolfman had fear in his eyes.
‘What is it?’ she said.
‘There must be other ways in.’
‘Is this a way in?’
‘There is a rope and it is secured to something. I think it’s a guide. But there will be other ways in. The boys can’t take everything in this way. It would all be soaked.’
‘This is the way in we have; why search for another?’
Feileg looked at the ground. ‘I don’t like the water,’ he said.
‘Oh Feileg,’ said Adisla. She squeezed him to her. He looked into her eyes and on impulse she rested her lips on his in a light kiss. Feileg didn’t know what to say, still less what to do.
Adisla slipped from his arms, took three big gulps of breath and dived into the pool.
48 The Pool of Tears
At first Saitada had gone north by mistake, through deserted farmsteads, past houses where now only rats sheltered from the cold. She had picked up some things of use to her there - two mouldy blankets which provided some warmth, enough rags to cover her face, bind her feet and wrap the sword, and a cup in which to melt snow for water.
It had been three days before she had seen smoke from a hut, and when she had spoken the name Authun and gestured to ask if he was there, the people had laughed and pointed to the south past the Troll Wall. They thought she was a simpleton but still poured their advice into her ears. It was not safe to travel to the south. The land around those mountains was cursed. Nightmares of death and torture had come down from the slopes and now no one could stand to live there. The witches, it was said, were dying and their magic had poisoned the land. Saitada listened and said nothing more. She could understand them, though she didn’t know how.
That night the son of the house decided to have a look at what the old beggar had in her bundle, but as he went to prise it from Saitada’s fingers he caught a glimpse of that burn on the side of her face and went back to his bed. In the morning, ashamed by his actions the night before, he gave her a warm cloak, some old boots and a rough tunic that the dog had been using for a bed. Saitada bowed to thank them for their hospitality and turned for the long journey south.
Authun’s people had not forgotten him, and at the farms and among the flocks they told her where she needed to go. The snow was lighter in the south, though the wind was cruel. Still, the people kept to the tradition of welcome for travellers that existed throughout that land, took her in by night and pointed her on her way the next morning. She found him two days’ walk into the Iron Woods
.
A hunter took her half the way in out of pity for her face and showed her the direction she needed to take - to keep among the birches and come down if the woods turned to only firs, to keep the slope to her left, the Pole Star to her right and to trust to luck for the rest. After so long in the dark the night made her dizzy and her head felt open to the sky. And what a sky. It was shot with fire, swirls of green and red that seemed to her as if the gods had lit their beacons to rejoice in what she was doing. She didn’t stop to stare. Her purpose and her need for warmth drove her on.
It was the following evening and the moon was full when she met him. He was sitting on a rock looking into a pool. Much of it was frozen, but where the pool was fed by a small waterfall the water was still free. His long silver hair shone in the moonlight like water itself, or like a prophecy of how the waterfall would look when the cold finally took it. He did not look at her but remained focused on the pool. Without turning his head, he said, ‘Do not look to me for battle, stranger; there are enough widows screaming in my dreams.’
Saitada did not reply. The king had no fire and no cloak and was so still that the plumes of steam that came from his freezing breath made her think of a mountain wreathed in mist. Eventually he looked up.
No spearman or berserk could have made him stand, but Saitada did.
‘Lady, I have thought of you,’ he said.
She bowed her head.
The king went on. ‘That thought drew me here.’ He pointed to the pool. ‘He is in here, the man you saw me send to the ocean floor, and the other kinsmen I threw away. It seems to me that this is a magic pool, fed not by the hills but by the tears of the widows and orphans I have made.’
He turned to look at the waterfall and then back to her. No enemy could have put him in such a state of agitation.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I am sorry for what I did to you. Your face haunts my dreams. I took your children and left you to monsters. And for what? To influence fate when we know all fates are set at birth. The child will not bring everlasting fame to the Horda, or if he will, in no way that I can see. And if he does, what of it?’
Still Saitada said nothing. She did not hate the king. He had done no more than move her from one place to another, she thought, as she had been moved from the smith to the farmer to the priests. It was her fate in life to be a slave. He had not, as the witch had done, parted her from her children.
Authun did not see it that way and felt the shame build further in him. Already that shame had taken him from his kingdom, from his family and his battles to sit in the freezing woods, listening to the voice of the waters for year upon year and going to war on the person he had been. And yet, when robbers came, when bears struck at him or the winter bit, he could not let himself go, could not die, and fought always for life. He hunted when he would rather have starved, drank when he would have died of thirst. Saitada had been wrong. Authun couldn’t kill anyone at all. He couldn’t kill himself. He couldn’t step over the threshold he had pushed so many others across. The dishonour of that hovered above him like a mighty fist that could smash him at any instant.
‘What would you have me do, lady?’
Saitada pointed to the north.
‘You want me to go with you? For what? You gave me pity and despair. What other gifts do you have for me?’
Saitada stared into his eyes and said the first word she had ever spoken in his language other than his name, the word she had heard whispered through the witch caves on the trembling lips of the boys, on the hushed breath of the girls.
‘Death,’ she said. She walked forward and put the bundle she was carrying into his arms. He opened it and in the pale light of the woodland night saw the scabbard of the Moonsword. He drew the sword and watched the cold spark of the moon run the length of the blade.
‘Then I will follow you,’ he said.
Saitada turned and began to walk out of the forest.
49 Manifestation
The witch’s energies had been directed towards Lieaibolmmai - towards giving him enough power to bring calamity on himself. She had provided the noose. He had put his head inside it and jumped. When he died under the teeth of the wolf, her mind became free.
She had been in the wolf’s mouth, the lowest cave, lying naked upon the teeth of stone to demand the gods recognise her suffering with revelation. She wanted to open that door that led even further into the earth, to the bound god, his serpents and his bowl. But she couldn’t find him. The passageways he had inhabited were still there but there was no sign of Loki, nor even a resonance of his presence. In her pain, frustration and madness she did not even notice that the sword she had enchanted was gone.
Lieaibolmmai’s passing had come to her like a lightening in the atmosphere, the feeling of a house with its doors left open to spring after a long heavy winter.
She struggled up from the jagged rocks and stood in her blood and her filth. Although the queen knew her way through the tunnels by touch, she had prepared a little lamp for the end of her ordeal, knowing that she would want the comfort of light after travelling to such dark places. She lit it and felt a tingle of relief course through her. At her feet was the little piece of leather with the Wolfsangel rune carved on it. She touched it and felt the resonance of the symbol inside her. It had returned to her. Yes, Odin was dead, taken by the only thing that could take him - the Fenris Wolf come to earth. She had given the hanged god his runes, let him come to his knowledge of himself, and he had cast the spell that had killed him.
She stumbled up a passage to where a spring spilled from the ground. She cupped her hand to drink, and as she lifted the water, some passed through her fingers. It fell, she thought, too quickly. She picked up a pebble and rolled it in her hand. It dropped from her fingers and bounced on the rocky floor. Too far? It seemed so to her. Only Odin could frighten the rocks and the streams, only Odin could make the air depart and the seas pull away. He was still alive. Despite her best efforts, he was still alive.
The witch queen - though she was now queen only of herself, her subjects all lying slaughtered - sank down in the dark, trembling. The air was moving in the passageways. She knew what it was - the breath of the god. He was coming for her and she was alone: no sisters to augment her power, no army of witches to send against him to weaken him. Had she been tricked? Had some deeper magic than hers turned her hands to murder?
The witch felt her mind twist. The god crowded in on her, inhabited everything around her, seeped through the passageways and caves to surround and suffocate her. Odin had come for her - Odin, lord of the hanged, Odin the berserk, Odin the frenzied, dangler, screamer, spear inviter, old one eye, Odin the mad, Odin the poet, Odin the rain, Odin the rock, Odin the dark and Odin the light. He waited at every turn of the tunnel, hid in every pool, but flickered away as she snatched a hand into the blackness to catch him, splashed footsteps through the dark as she chased to confront him.
And if Odin was there, where was the wolf? She had thought the northern sorcerer would bring Fenrisulfr to flesh on earth and destroy himself. But if the drum magician was not Odin, then the wolf could not have manifested. She was sure the wolf would only be fully present when the god came into his knowledge of himself. Sanity came to her now only in glimpses. She had killed, she had suffered, she had striven towards magical insight. Now worms seemed to gnaw through the labyrinth of her thoughts. Structures and links were missing from her mind, ways blocked, burned and broken. So other paths had been found, bored through the lattice of ordinary assumptions, building precarious bridges between areas of her mind that had only ever communicated indirectly. Others would have called it madness, but to the queen it was a blessing which she had won through her years of murder and pain.
A realisation sparked inside her. She was the first of magicians, a sorcerer without parallel. She had hidden her intentions even from herself, afraid that knowing her own plans would compromise her with the god. If he knew she was acting against him he would strike. But,
deceived, she was safe. While her energies were directed at a false target, the god would think he had time - he might dally, hesitate. And in so doing he had given her the chance to bring the wolf to the cusp of existence in the best possible way - by getting someone else to do it for her. Her visions told her she had even hidden from herself the true nature of the spell and which boy would be used to house the spirit of the god come to earth. Odin had not been able to force this secret from her because she had not known it herself. So the god had not seen the peril he was in until her protector was ready.
She recalled the knot at the throat of the first dead girl - the dead lord’s necklace with its three tight twists, and she knew it had been a message - one thing hidden inside another, inside yet another. It was magic of the deepest depth, magic that works independently of the sorcerer - of her and through her, yes, but it could not really be said to be her doing. This was not spell casting; it was a force she had welcomed in as a child, something that now cast her.