Foxmask

  The creature was growling now; it had gripped the bag’s strap in its little, sharp teeth and would not let go. By all the gods, thought Thorvald, he’d better be right about this and not end up walking into Asgrim’s encampment with nothing more than some puny runt of a dog. He thought he was right. He had listened with care when the men discussed the nature of what they hunted.

  “All right then,” he said cautiously, reaching for the bag and praying the creature would not decide to sink its teeth into his hand. “We take this as well. I dare say Creidhe would be quite cross if we left it behind; she sets a high value on her handiwork. Here, I’ll carry it on my back, and you under my arm—”

  But that was not to be. The creature watched him take up Creidhe’s belongings, then scampered out of the hut. Thorvald’s heart sank. The thing was tiny and agile; it could lead him a merry dance in the hills and crevices of the island while Sam sailed back to Council Fjord, taking away his only means of escape.

  But when he came out of the hut, leaving the fallen warrior lying motionless by the fire, the doglike creature was heading off down the path to the anchorage. It stopped from time to time to glance back, as if to check whether Thorvald was following. There was no need to capture it, to confine it, to force it to leave the Isle of Clouds. It was quite apparent that Foxmask had decided to go home.

  It was a long time since the white-haired man had learned how to keep a small boat afloat in open sea. He had been young and hale then, his locks as dark and glossy as polished oak wood. He had learned quickly, the choice being to die, and break a promise, or to sail, and live, and remain true. He had learned the hardest way possible. Such a lesson is never forgotten. Now his hands moved efficiently, rigging mast and sail, loading what he had brought with him: less, even, than the basic tools for survival they had allowed him when they cast him out into lifelong exile all those years ago. He had water today, and a spare cloak, and some rope. No food: he didn’t expect he’d be needing that. No fishing gear. This voyage had one purpose only.

  He launched the small craft from the shore of Blood Bay, pushing it through the dark sand of the tidal flats and into thigh-deep water before clambering aboard. The process was less than graceful; he was no longer a young man, though, he thought grimly as he took up the oars, neither was he yet so old that he could not act when it at last came time for it. He had waited long enough for fear that such a decision might cause him to break a vow he must never forswear. Long ago he had promised the dearest friend he ever had, his only true brother, that when he made landfall on his perilous journey he would strive to be all he could be: wise, balanced, a true leader of men. But how could a flawed creature such as himself keep this solemn promise, other than by sealing himself off from the world of affairs? There was a craving in him for control, for respect, for the admiration of men. He sensed that, however powerful he became, it would never be enough to satisfy him. Better then, surely, to close off any possibility of power, lest he break his oath and bring darkness on them all. Yet the desire for control had never truly died over the years as he labored in the guise of holy brother, fashioning his days around the hours, from matins to compline, wielding his pen in scholarship, not in the secret messages of strategy and intrigue. He had mixed pigments, he had embellished his pages with delicacy and wit. He had copied the scriptures for Breccan. He had even made maps for the Ruler, just to keep his hand in, so to speak. He had learned that to milk a cow and to dig a vegetable patch in the right spirit were, to the faithful, true acts of prayer. And he had watched Asgrim’s pathetic efforts to establish a community here, had observed the inequities and follies of the governance the Ruler imposed on the frightened islanders. He had stood by as the Long Knife people battered themselves into hollow ruins of men in their futile struggle against the enemy they had not begun to study, the foe they had no hope of understanding.

  He could not intervene. To step in and take Asgrim’s place, as he had longed to do, was surely to become once more the leader he had shown himself to be in the Light Isles: one who knew no way to govern but by cruelty and terror, a Ruler less fit for the title than Asgrim himself. He had come close at times. Once, when he was new here, and the knowledge of kingship lost was raw and painful in his mind, he had confronted Asgrim and read the fear in the other’s eyes, a fear that awakened bitter memories. Niall had withdrawn, opting for solitude, for a scholarly detachment. And later, when the Ulstermen had come, and he had discovered to his astonishment that friendship of a kind was still possible for him after all, there had been the boy, Erling. A keen mind, a strong will, for all the lad’s dreamy ways: Niall had discovered in himself a desire to protect the youth from his father, to allow him a chance, at least, to grow and learn, free from the harsh controls Asgrim saw fit to impose on this son who was not the son he had wanted.

  There had been a spark of something rare in Erling. Breccan had seen it, too, as the boy questioned scripture endlessly, searching to find meanings in the tales of Christ and his disciples that were not present in the pattern of his own life among the Long Knife people. Well, Erling had certainly broken the pattern, but not in the way Breccan had hoped, which was that the boy might join them in the hermitage and commit himself in time to their own vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Erling had surprised everyone. He had endured his father’s beatings, the abuse, the imprisonment, biding his time until he might escape. Then he had stolen the child away from the Unspoken. He had astounded them all by removing the seer neatly and effectively beyond the reach of anyone. Such an act of furious courage, of dedicated self-sacrifice, was surely the stuff of legend.

  The problem was, Niall told himself as he set the little boat on a southward course toward the Isle of Shadows, the real problem was that Erling’s heroism had achieved nothing beyond a momentary denting of Asgrim’s iron-strong authority. The voices still came in the night; children still perished. The hunt went on, with its harvest of death and despair. The seer had probably died that first winter, out on the Isle of Clouds in the mist and rain. The lad might not have fared better, for an ability to argue points of logic and a fondness for stories were not the best gifts to carry into a life of struggle with cold, hunger and loneliness. There probably was no seer anymore. But others still clung to their belief in him. The Unspoken had faith, the Long Knife people hunted, the crazy feud continued. In time, it would destroy them all.

  Before, Niall would have stayed in his hermitage, observing, considering. He would have watched the boats sail out at midsummer and return the next day with somewhat fewer men on board. Breccan would have prayed for Asgrim’s warriors, and he himself would have knelt quietly by his brother’s side, respecting his faith. If God chose to reward the courage of the Long Knife people with failure and loss, who was he to criticize?

  But it was different now. He had let them take the girl, Eyvind’s own daughter, whom he should have protected, that bonny young woman with his dear friend’s butter-yellow hair, his guileless blue eyes, sweet as a cloudless summer sky, his heartbreaking goodness and simplicity. She was the very pattern of her father, yet more, for she also had Nessa’s quick mind, her depth of understanding. Now Creidhe was dead: his fault, Somerled’s fault, Somerled’s touch again, turning all to ashes. He could have acted earlier, and he had chosen not to. He must act now. It was too late for Creidhe, but not too late for the boy. No, not a boy: a man. His son. His son, Thorvald, the image of Margaret in his regal stance, his air of contained authority, his proud features and fine auburn hair . . . Yet it had been Niall’s own dark, troubled eyes that had gazed back at him from that guarded young face, his own eyes full of a conviction and purpose he had never been able to harness as Eyvind had wished him to. Asgrim might be ashamed of his own son. For Niall, that was not at all the way of it. He had recognized from that first shattering moment that his heart was not, after all, frozen forever; that this young man was himself as he should have been, a fine leader untrammeled by the dark fetters of the past that Somerled had never be
en able to shake off. If he could have shouted so the whole world could hear, he would have cried out, He is my son.

  So now it was time to act. Asgrim might choose to pursue the hunt year after year, tossing away the lives of his men like so many broken tools. He would not be allowed to waste Thorvald thus. Thorvald would live; he would be a leader such as these folk had never known before.

  Niall had considered his plan a long while. He thought it would work, with no real damage to anyone that mattered. What was a seer, after all, but someone who could give the people reasonable advice as to how they might best live their lives? The details of it were unimportant. Nine out of ten men of Rogaland had fair-haired mothers. The rest, that was nothing: probably no more nor less than a wretch such as himself deserved. Certainly less than the punishment he had inflicted on his own brother in a time when he had known only the lust for power, the bitter struggle to make himself into what he believed he must be: a king of men. The ritual could be endured. In its way, it might even be rather interesting, if he were able to remain conscious while they performed the surgery.

  The little boat scudded across the ocean, bobbing like a toy in the deep waters between the Isle of Storms and the southern islands, mysterious home of the Unspoken. Niall gazed about him, committing all to memory: the myriad hues of the water; the wide, pale sky dotted with gulls; the steep, dark forms of the islands, fringed with bird-thronged cliffs. The day was a sweet one; the sun had a real warmth in it, the air was fresh, and seals swam to left and right of his boat as if in escort.

  He would have liked to see Thorvald again, just once, before they took away his sight. He would have liked to look at his son and tell him how proud he was to have sired such a fine young man; how sorry he was that he had not watched him grow up. Foolish, that was. No boy wanted Somerled as a father. Thorvald was the leader he was precisely because his father had not been there during those growing years. He had been free of his heritage. Margaret had done a good job. Niall wished he could have told her so.

  Breccan would not be happy. Breccan would find him gone, and sorrow for him, and pray for him. If the Ulsterman could see him now, Niall thought, finding there was a smile on his face with nothing at all of bitterness in it, Breccan would be surprised. For there were four things the white-haired man had brought with him on this last voyage from the Isle of Storms. The first was the cloak, since he must stay warm enough to use his hands effectively. The boat could not sail itself. The second was the rope; it was foolish to travel without rope. Third came water to keep him alive in case of emergency. Fourth was the wooden cross that hung around his neck. He had found he could lay down quill and parchment easily, knowing he would never write again. The last psalm was finished, copied in perfect completion, the capitals done with leaves and flowers, and here and there in the text, the places where his thoughts had challenged the confines of the manuscript, yearning and reaching and breaking free of the borders. That work was done now. There would be no more letters, no more maps. A man does not write in darkness. There would be no more sailing, no toiling in the gardens, no walking to settlement or lakeshore or hilltop. That was accepted; the choice to end that life was all his own. And yet the cross still hung about his neck, a simple thing of ash wood that had seemed, until the day he met his son, no more than the meaningless symbol of a faith that would belong always to others like Breccan and Colm, never to himself. Somerled, adherent to a god of peace and forgiveness? Somerled, converted by a red-haired Ulsterman to a path of goodness and light? The idea was so ludicrous that surely even Eyvind, the truest and most tolerant of friends, would laugh in disbelief if he could hear it. And yet, the cross: he reached to close his hand around it, to shut his eyes in prayer. De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine . . . Always, before, no more than the words, polite echo of Breccan’s and Colm’s, the motions only, to make a template for his days, so he could bear to go on living this shell of a life, this travesty of an existence . . . Yet now, no echo but the true word, whole, fierce, majestic, striking a terror to the heart, for this awful voice told him of sacrifice and redemption, of the laying down of a life infinitely more valuable than his own, of the salvation, not just of a couple of hapless tribes on a far-flung group of islands, but of all mankind, forever. This voice whispered in his ear like the rolling of distant thunder, speaking of fathers and sons. This voice made him weep and tremble. It made him grow still with the longing for grace.

  And so Niall sailed steadily on, and the southern isles loomed closer and closer as the sun passed overhead. Gulls screamed; the water parted under the vessel’s bow. His left hand touched the warm wood of the cross, his right held the steering oar as the wind carried him toward his destiny. The moment of darkness, the moment when all hung in the balance, would be the moment of awakening; the shadowing of human vision would be the bright dawn of the soul, bought with love and sacrifice. The voice sang in his spirit, at once terrifying and comforting. For this, he had waited all his life.

  Creidhe began to fight a way out of the mists of unconsciousness. Sounds came first: the creak of a sail, footsteps on wood, Sam’s voice, curt, tense. Then an awareness of movement: a surging up and down, familiar from that unspeakable time of confinement on the Sea Dove. It felt as if a knife was jabbing into her temple. She was lying on something soft, a cloak, laid over a ridged, uncomfortable surface: the boards of a boat’s planking, probably. Her arm was hurting. There was something tied around it, tight and awkward. As vision returned through the fog that wreathed her eyes, memory came with it, sharp as a kick in the belly. Keeper . . . Small One . . . Creidhe sat up abruptly, and nearly vomited from the pain. She tried for words, but found none. The little boat, not the Sea Dove but a tiny, frail craft of driftwood and animal skins, was being tossed about with a violence that far surpassed the storm they had endured on their voyage from the Light Isles. Water sprayed everywhere, fine and drenching; while she gathered her breath, a wave washed over them, and she was lying in a cold puddle, her clothing instantly wet through. It was then she saw Thorvald, his hands grasping a scoop or bucket, his features tight and fierce as he stooped to bail the flood from this toy of a craft. The wind whipped at his auburn hair and tore at his clothing with greedy fingers. There were voices in it, howling, angry voices: You think to cross the Fool’s Tide, you, a mere man, and an incomer? Fool indeed! Beyond him Sam could be seen struggling with the sail, keeping his balance as a true seaman does, reading the surge as if it were an extension of his own body. Creidhe forced herself to her knees; made her head turn this way and that, despite the pain, made her eyes search from bow to stern and into every corner of the boat, refusing to believe what she sensed must be true: surely even Thorvald would not do this, surely the ancestors would not allow it . . .

  She saw only the two men, and the churning sea all around them, and behind them the Isle of Clouds, already vanishing into the mists of memory, as if it were all no more than a dream, a silly girl’s fancy that she could change the pattern of something so ancient, so grand and terrible; could somehow, if she were brave enough, if she loved enough, make it all come out right. A cry of pure anguish came from her lips. The primitive, wrenching wail froze Thorvald where he crouched with bailer in hand, and made Sam pause, white-faced, even as he struggled to keep the small craft from spilling them all out into the sea.

  The eldritch scream became a torrent of words. Creidhe could hear her own wild babbling, could feel herself clutching at Thorvald’s clothing and shouting her furious grief into his face as he stared at her, his blank expression showing he barely comprehended the sense of what she was trying to tell him. But now she had started, she didn’t seem to be able to slow down. “Where is he? Where are they? What did you do to them? You’ve killed him, you’ve killed him, haven’t you, you’ve destroyed him for your own gain, your own pride—how could you, Thorvald? You’ve left Small One all by himself, I promised to look after him, I promised, he’s only little, he can’t—”

  Thorvald slapped her across the
face. It was a calculated blow, not painful, just hard enough to bring her tirade to an abrupt halt. She stared at him, shocked into silence. In that moment, he seemed like a stranger.

  “Where is he, Thorvald?” she whispered, her fingers still clutching tightly at the breast of his tunic. “What have you done? Answer me!”

  He had heard her all right, she could see it; he had understood those words above the wind’s howling and the angry music of the Fool’s Tide.

  “Now, Creidhe,” he said carefully, “you’ve been through some terrible times, I can see that, and we’ll talk about it when Sam’s got us safely back to Council Fjord. It’s dangerous on these waters; you need to sit down and be quiet, and let us sail the boat—”

  “Tell me! Tell me what you’ve done! Where is he? Where is—?”

  “Creidhe, stop it. You’re safe now, it’s all right. We’re here, we’ll look after you. It’s a shock, I know. For us, too. We thought you were dead—”

  “Thorvald!” Creidhe said through gritted teeth. “Where is the child?” And at that moment she saw the ears, small, pointed ears like a dog’s, the only part of the seer that was visible in the bows of the boat, behind her little bag and two other packs. Small One was here; they had taken him. They had taken him and now they would hand him over to Asgrim. If they had taken him, that meant Keeper was dead.

  “Creidhe?” Thorvald’s voice had softened just a little. “It’ll be all right now, I promise you. It’s all over. We have you safe.” It was the tone of a man who tries to reassure a frightened woman that all is well, believing that should be enough for her; believing she cannot possibly comprehend the true meaning of affairs, and that therefore there is no point in trying to explain them. She thought, too, that he was fighting a battle with his own anger, with his own tumult of feelings. But there was no room for sympathy in her. Not now.