Feileg was sick with the pain now and had to pause. After four breaths he limped on again. There was the smell of fish oil. Someone had a lamp down there. Yes, he could see the glow. He pressed on towards the light, the tunnel narrowing to a crack. He breathed in and slid sideways through.
The cave was no bigger than the inside of a longhouse, the ceiling falling to the floor at one end and forming a wedge of jagged rocks like an animal’s jaws. Adisla was there, lying bound on the sharp stones, soaked in blood. Feileg’s heart leaped as he saw her.
The witch, her face a mask of blood from a ruined eye, was standing staring vacantly into space, a broken spear shaft in her hand. She had a piece of rope around her neck, tied with an elaborate knot at the front. Feileg recognised it as a hangman’s noose, Odin’s symbol. The wolfman was terrified of the magical child, appalled by what had happened to Adisla, but he forced himself to speak.
‘Lady,’ said Feileg, speaking to the witch but limping as fast as he could to Adisla, ‘we are on an errand of great importance. A friend is bewitched and has taken the shape of a wolf. He is here, in the tunnels. We need you to use your arts to cure him. I have gold and can pay.’
Adisla was shaking and Feileg could see she had lost a lot of blood. She was tied down by leather cords secured to rusty pins in the rock. Feileg used the Moonsword to cut them. Then he held her to him and kissed her on the forehead. She was weak, scarcely able to move but she was saying something. Feileg bent his ear to her mouth.
‘I have seen her mind,’ she said, ‘I have seen her mind. Run. Feileg, run.’
Feileg shook his head.
‘I couldn’t run if I wanted to, and I do not want to,’ he said. ‘I will stay here with you. It’ll be all right. She will do what we ask, won’t you, lady?’
Still the witch said nothing. There was a thump from the top of the tunnel.
‘She put me to those rocks, Feileg. I have been cruelly treated.’
‘Then she will make amends or she will die. She will cure him.’
‘No, you don’t understand.’
‘She is all we have. We must make her do as we ask.’
‘No Feileg, no.’ Adisla was shaking and sobbing.
The wolf, Adisla sensed, was an expression of some huge and terrible magic. Gullveig imagined herself as manipulating this force, but Adisla, allowed into the web of the witch queen’s mind, had seen with saner eyes. Something that was part of Gullveig but - at the same time - external to her and much more powerful was bending her to its own will. The thing, whatever it was, felt cold and hungry. It looked for death in the jaws of the wolf, and that death was linked to Adisla’s own and to those of Feileg and Vali, again and again in an endless cycle of rebirth and slaughter, all that carnage expressed by the pulsing of that rune.
‘He will kill her again and again, for ever and ever, and us too. I have been in her mind; I have seen this thing happen. You must kill her before he does. He will act out the prophecy and we will be doomed.’
‘I will not allow him to kill her,’ said Feileg.
‘How can you stop him?’
‘This sword cuts him,’ said Feileg. ‘I will drive him off. No wolf wants to bleed.’
He tried to sound confident, but he put more faith in the witch’s powers than he did in his own sword skills.
There was another thump, closer now, and a terrible howl. The witch turned her head in its direction. The tunnel was too narrow, Feileg was sure, for the wolf to get through. That would allow the witch to work safe from its jaws.
Feileg looked down at Adisla. ‘You will have your prince back,’ he said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No. I have seen. I have seen. Kill her, Feileg, kill her before it is too late. We can fight a monster; you cannot fight a god.’
‘She is our salvation.’
‘She is our death, eternally and again and again, you and me, Bragi and more, torture and horror without end. Always she looks for death in the jaws of the wolf. Kill her. Kill her before he does.’
‘Adisla, my love,’ he said, ‘the wolf is here. He has come. He could keep us in here for ever. I am no swordsman, and already a mighty warrior, a man brought up to arms from his earliest years, has proved no match for him. The witch must help him. Can you speak to him again? Can you calm him and allow her to work her magic on him?’
‘He is death, always death. He was a breath from killing me in the north. Do not bring him here, Feileg, do not bring him.’
‘He is here,’ said Feileg.
Adisla gave way to terror and just shook in his arms.
The noise was still closer, a deep and angry growling but coupled with something else. Feileg, who had eaten countless times with his wolf brothers, recognised it. It was the sound of tearing flesh, of joints coming apart, of bones being pulverised. And then there was a third sound, an occasional pitiful whine, like a wolf caught in a hunter’s trap. The monster was wounded.
‘She will save us or she will die.’
‘If she dies by his teeth then we are lost. It is what she wants. Strike at her, Feileg, strike at her.’ Adisla was pulling at his shoulders. She was raving, thought Feileg, driven mad by what she had endured.
The witch was still staring ahead, the spear shaft raised. Feileg wondered if she meant to strike Adisla with it but couldn’t summon the will. Another thump, much closer, and with it that grizzling note of agony. Feileg stumbled as best he could back to the tunnel.
There was a wave of breath, hot and fetid, which hit him like a fist, driving him back into the cave. The snapping jaws of the beast were no more than three paces from him. It was forcing its way through, so desperate it was smashing its own body in the attempt.
This was Feileg’s chance to kill the beast. It was momentarily stuck, its back legs scrabbling at the ground, its shoulders crunching and cracking in the narrow gap, its head twisting and straining forward. He raised the Moonsword but could not strike. His mind went back to the escape from the beach, to the water. Vali had saved his life. It was more than that though. The prince had been his double, the person he could have been but for a twist of the Norns’ thread, and now he felt bound to him.
He fell back. ‘Use your magic, witch,’ he said, gesturing to the tunnel. ‘Use your magic or I will kill you both.’
Still the witch said nothing, did nothing. He raised the Moonsword above his head as if to hit her but even then she didn’t move, just stood holding that spear as if about to strike at an unseen enemy.
Feileg turned to Adisla. ‘When the wolf gets into the chamber, I will occupy it. You circle around and get out into the tunnel. It will be stuck in here for a time. If you can speak to him then do. After that she will cure him or she will die.’
‘Kill her, kill her.’
There was no more time. The wolf had made it and smacked onto the floor like a fish onto a slab. It seemed boneless, almost: only its back legs were moving and one of them seemed dislocated at a terrible angle.
‘Go!’ said Feileg. ‘Go!’ He pulled Adisla to her feet.
She swayed and would have fallen, but Feileg, from somewhere, found the strength to support her, taking her arm over his shoulder and plunging towards the tunnel. They made it only a few paces before collapsing.
The wolf was writhing like a hooked eel on the floor of the cave, the witch still immobile with that spear in her hands.
‘Death and agony, always and for eternity,’ said Adisla.
Feileg shook his head. ‘This, for eternity,’ he said and hugged her to him. ‘The love you sent to me when we parted at the pool, the love we share now. Go, Adisla, and go with that love.’
He looked at the wolf. Its body was reforming. There was a sound like someone cracking a joint of mutton and the shoulders became recognisable again. It stretched out its forelegs and they too snapped back into shape.
‘You’ll die.’
‘I am not afraid to die. I am more afraid to live if I cannot save you. Go. Go! You once risked your life by settin
g me free, now I do the same for you. Go!’
The wolf breathed in and there was a tearing noise as its lungs pushed its ribs back into position.
Adisla squeezed his hand and kissed it.
‘Leave here,’ she said.
‘ I will come back to you. I vow it.’ He shoved her into the tunnel.
‘Feileg!’ Adisla’s arms stretched after him, but he had gone back and she had no strength to move.
The wolf had got to its feet, complete and whole. In the small cave Feileg realised just how big the animal was, its green eyes the size of shield bosses and its teeth a hand span each. It towered over Feileg and the skinny body of the witch. It looked at Adisla in the mouth of the tunnel, at the torture rocks and at the witch. Then it fixed the witch queen with a hard stare and drew back its teeth. She was unmoved, just staring ahead with that spear raised.
Feileg saw what he needed to do. He had hated Vali, resented him for tying him and for being loved by Adisla. But hadn’t it all been for the best? Without Vali he would have never known what it was like to be loved, to feel a kiss returned or see an affectionate look in a woman’s eye. His destiny had been tied to that of the prince, and though it would have been simpler to cut him where he stood, fighting was not the way forward. He’d had enough of that.
Feileg put down the Moonsword at the monster’s feet.
‘Prince,’ he said, ‘come back to yourself.’
The wolf hacked and coughed and words began to form. ‘I am here . . . I am here . . . I am known to you . . . I am . . .’
It seemed to be having difficulty framing its thoughts.
Feileg spoke. ‘This lady, this child, she is your cure. Bow down before her and do as she bids. Her magic is famous in all known lands. Let her help you, Vali. For the love you have known. For Adisla, relent.’
The wolf lowered its head and bowed down before the witch queen.
For the first time Feileg saw the terrible child move. Her head turned towards him and her gaze met his. Feileg felt those spider claws scuttle across his brain again as a rush of thoughts and sensations. He saw what a fool he had been. The wolf was all that was standing between him and what he wanted. With Vali gone, Adisla was his, her past cut away, her future free. He thought of his disgust at seeing the prince gnawing at those bodies on the ship, Vali’s slaying of the brave Bragi, his murder of the hunters. Why should he be cured? He had forfeited that right with his murders.
Feileg took up the Moonsword and struck.
Adisla screamed as the bright arc of the sword flashed through the air to sink into the animal’s flank, but the blow was inexpert and poor. The wolf rounded on Feileg, driving its teeth into him, ripping away the flesh from his side and smashing him to the floor. The animal threw back its head, opened its jaws and swallowed the meat down. Adisla was too weak to move.
The witch smiled. The next stage was now plain. It was more than a spell though; it was an expression of something eternal, powerful and undeniable - like a rune, she thought. Yes, a rune. She stroked the piece of leather with the thumb of one hand while the other still held the spear shaft.
The wolf snarled, muscles bubbling on its body as its brother’s blood dripped from its lips. It was transforming, not so much physically this time, but magically, the witch could sense. That was the key, as the rune Loki had given her had shown - the two brothers becoming one. It was all in place, all ready for the final stage.
The witch reversed the spear shaft, wedged the butt on the floor and leaped forward, impaling herself so that the point came out of her back.
To Adisla, reality seemed to fall apart.
56 The Dead
The witch was a little girl again, lost in her first memories. What were her first memories? The dark and the cold, the faces of the women smeared with their ghost paint, the weak light of torches and the damp smell of the caves.
They say with spells in tunnels dark
As a witch with charms did you work
And in witch’s guise among men did you go
Unmanly your soul must seem.
The voice, the witch queen knew the voice. If was him. Who? Him. The mocker. She giggled. Yes, the mocker who was not so clever as he reckoned. Loki, the liar, who thought he could stand apart from the affairs of the gods and laugh. Not so. She had hooked him in and made him play his part too. Did he think those fetters just held his body and that his mind was free to wander the worlds as a man? No. He was snared and trapped and pinned and tethered, shackled and bound in every movement of his thoughts. She had done for him, that red-haired fellow, that night caller, that smirker and snickerer and enemy of death.
Had the women of the Troll Wall known who she was? They had made her their queen when she was six. She had all the runes, all of them, as no mortal ever had before. Had they known?
The truth had been obscured from the witch, but as the spear sent its energy of pain throughout her body, she saw what it was. She had killed them, every one, the girls, the boys and her sisters; she had slipped into their minds at night to whisper suicide; she had strangled, drowned and burned them in their trances and she hadn’t done it to weaken herself, as an extreme measure to preserve the magical gains of the sisterhood, but because she was a fearful and jealous god who despised them for their power. She had hidden her intent from herself, afraid that her earthly form might rebel and try to avoid its fate. She touched the triple hanging knot at her neck. One thing hidden inside another inside another. She had thought she had hidden the wolf from himself to hide him from the god. In fact, she had hidden him from herself. Now the deception unravelled and she knew who the wolf had come for. It had come for her.
The spear seemed perfect, and the position she lay in on the floor perfect too, an illustration of the rune that had guided her. She had made a Wolfsangel of her own body.
She was everywhere, controlling; she sensed every mind on earth and could influence and touch them. In the moment of her greatest pain was her greatest magic.
She said her own name: ‘Odin.’ Her voice was cracked from years of disuse but the force of the god’s will pushed the sound through the reluctant throat.
The body of the witch was bleeding, blood spreading in a wide pool. The wolf put down his head to lap at it. Adisla could not take her eyes off what was happening in the cavern.
The witch stood. She pulled the spear from her belly and looked at the wolf, who looked back at her.
‘I have called you here to do this,’ she said.
The wolf drew back its lips, exposing its teeth.
‘It was this way, and it will be this way for ever,’ said the witch, ‘though it will never be easy for you, Fenrisulfr.’
To Adisla, it seemed that the caves no longer existed. She was at the centre of a huge blackened plain, where the shadows of ravens seemed to sweep over her, where smoke tinged the air and the cries of a dying battle could be heard.
The witch too was different. She was dressed not in that bloodstained shift but in man’s armour. She was carrying a shield and in her hand was a cruel spear.
‘I am Odin,’ said the witch, ‘all hater, all seer, lord of the hanged, lord of the slain, lord of madness, wisest in magic and battle bold.’
The wolf began to keen.
‘Come, Fenrisulfr,’ she said. ‘You are the slaughter beast, my enemy and my accomplice.’
The wolf sprang as the witch forwarded her spear and stabbed. Then the wolf had her by the throat, shaking her body like a dog with a doll until her feet came off the floor. Adisla saw strange bright shapes scatter from the witch, some fizzing to the ground, some melting like snowflakes on warm land and others hitting her. A sense of flow and current seemed to go through her, then a frozen feeling as cold as the north wind, then something that stamped and steamed and breathed was in her mind. Finally, a smell like fresh grass came to her and a sense of warmth like a spring day. These were runes, she knew, each with its separate power. They told her so. They spoke.
The witch had
dropped her spear and was beating uselessly against the wolf’s muzzle. The animal did not relax its grip but tightened its jaws ever harder about her. Adisla saw rain showers, sunshine, a great tree that seemed to stretch up to the heavens, horses, a hearth. All the witch’s magic shook from her in the animal’s jaws.
Then the scene faded; the walls of the cavern returned. The wolf stood over the witch, guzzling her flesh.
Adisla felt the power of the runes and was restored and strong, all mysteries peeling away. Now, she knew, the magic was complete. The witch was Odin. The god had achieved what it wanted - death, its own and the queen’s, which were the same thing. The knowledge-seeking god had deepened his knowledge of death by experiencing it. The runes it had shed as its earthly self died seemed to burn within Adisla, offering insight and unhappiness.