Old Dark Things

CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH

  A resounding crack split the air.

  Kveldulf opened his eyes.

  He lay sprawled on the pile of rugs, shirtless but otherwise still clad in clothing that was half-damp from last night. Wan morning light stabbed through holes in the weave of the curtains. Throbbing pain pulsed in his forehead. Gently touching fingers to his scalp, he found the waxy scar. By noon even this trace of his fight with the faer-thing from the night before would be gone. He brushed a lock of hair over the injury to make it less obvious.

  The air shook again with a violent crack.

  Kveldulf found his shirt on a wicker rack that was set near the hearth. The coarse linen was washed and dry, if stiff, and smelling slightly of smoke. Helg had been busy. Pulling the shirt over his head, he then wrapped his cloak about his shoulders. The doeskin cloak had not been washed, and still smelled of wet and mud. The mustiness of the cloak made Kveldulf forcibly recall the night. Up until this moment he had been drifting in the half-awareness of a person only somewhat awake. But now, memories came surging back to him like a black river. He recalled the river, the deer, the campfire in the woods. A shadow moving in the trees. The death of the faer creatures who had been pretending to be a great beast. The mirror, reflecting his own eyes. Wolf's eyes.

  Still, very still, he stood for some time. The muscles around his eyes clenched tighter and tighter, until his vision turned from black to red and then fiery. He did not want to remember. He tried to block it out, forget it, as he had a hundred times before. He tried to make the sharp, bright pain blur into forgetfulness.

  And for a moment he was winning.

  Forgetting.

  But through it all came his mind's own voice. His promise to himself. I will not hunt. I will not forget. It had been important to swear to that. Something about the night had made a change in him. Two needs warred. To remember or not? To be aware of the pain, or forget? And at the point where he wanted to remember just a fraction more than he wished to forget, it became clear.

  Too clear.

  The realisation came back to him. The understanding. There was but one wolf, and it was he. It was some minutes before he could summon the energy to walk to the door.

  The sunlight forced Kveldulf into a brief fit of blinking, as his eyes adjusted. Morning shone over a forest filled with a hundred thousand branches glittering with drops of last night's rain. The air smelled richly of wet leaves, and was heady with thin steam that rose from the warming soil.

  More memories came back to him, not just from last night, but from the roll of years. He pushed them aside. Later, he told himself. Later. He would think about it later.

  "Kveldulf. You're up at last." Sigurd stood in the yard, breathing deeply, his arms slick with sweat. He had an old, slightly rust-spotted axe in one hand that gleaming along one recently sharpened edge. Before him stood a chopping block, to its left, a pile of kindling and also some half-hewn logs. Indulging in the effort Sigurd took the axe up in his two hands, swung it in a arc over his shoulders and then brought it down on the block with all the power of his arms and chest. The air shook with the impact, and the log on the block split cleanly in two.

  "What a helpful lad he is." Helg was standing in a patch of sunlight, leaning on her crooked walking staff, her pipe gripped firmly in a smile. "Such a helpful lad."

  Kveldulf nodded and let his expression mellow from grim to merely grave. "If you are weary, Sigurd, I can take a turn at the block."

  "Not at all." Sigurd's voice rang with the sort of thoughtless contentment some people find in a simple task well done. "Not since I lived on the family steading have I had a chance to do such good, earthy work." He picked up one of the offcuts and balanced it on the block. "Besides, Helg was saying she wanted a word with you when you woke."

  "Such a kind lad." She blew a wisp of smoke into the air, where the sunlight set it ablaze. "You know, usually I have to hire old-man Horst's good-for-nought son to chop my firewood over the winter. That lad is as lazy as a pig, and charges a me a two of the Eorl's copper gawns for the job."

  "Shameless," said Sigurd before another blow fell.

  Agreeing with a slight nod, Kveldulf turned to Helg. "A word?"

  "Yes. Let's go indoors. You can help me get the breakfast ready. I've a hankering for pottage, mutton, mushies and black sausage, all in a good fry-up. Nothing better than that for breakfast, eh?"

  "I can almost taste it already," said Sigurd cheerfully.

  Kveldulf's knotted his brow a little, but managed another polite nod all the same.

  Once inside, Helg piled cabbage and mutton onto a chopping board. Soon her dull knife was working rhythmically. Kveldulf took up the chore of stoking the smouldering hearth into a decent fire. All the while, he bit his tongue, waiting for Helg to say something. As the silence stretched he asked, in an offhand way, "Has Sigurd forgotten the creature in the woods?"

  "Sigurd? No, but in the plain light of day he can see that it was obviously a wolf. Maybe an unusually large wolf, but a wolf nonetheless. He is happy I think to be alive. Being so near death will do that to a man."

  "So I am told." The twigs began to curl in the heat. Soon small tongues of fire licked along them.

  "Here, help me with this." Helg had set out a big copper pan on the table. "Can you peel an onion and chop it up. Then I can fry it with the pottage. So you remember?"

  Kveldulf leaned heavily against the table, and fixed her with a distant gaze. "Why?"

  "Why, what? You have to be more specific, lad."

  "Why make me face... it."

  Helg was hesitant, sounding almost guilty when she answered. "Yourself? The truth? Well, would you rather live a lie?"

  "Perhaps."

  Helg breathed a sigh. "Hm, be that as it may, I couldn't have it. Other folks couldn't have it, neither. Is not your soul crimsoned enough by blood? Would you put more lives at risk by letting your wild half run free and untamed forever?"

  For a while, a silence stretched between them, and the only sound was that of the snick of the knife through a fat black sausage.

  "Besides," said Helg, "I think we may need you in full command of all your powers, both the corporeal and incorporeal, before long."

  "And why is that?"

  "Hrmmm." She shrugged. "Oh, this reason, that reason, a number of reasons, really. Cut the onion a little thinner, deary." With a sigh she laid the dull knife down on the block and said, "Look, there is trouble in the Veld, and I fear what may come of it. There has been too much meddling with troublesome things, and now those same things are turning their eyes to the lands of mortalfolk."

  "You speak of Alraun?"

  "I do. Mortal folk may wish for magic in their lives, but you and I know that magic has a price. Oh, by my mother's grave, does it have a price, and the price is seldom worth the paying. How many times have I wished I lived a life never knowing so much as a half of my wisdom? Humph. Bah and humph. It is all a crock of bah and humph. Alraun's price would be dear indeed."

  "He would steal souls to swell his court?"

  "No. More ambitious than that, I am afraid. One hears rumours, if one knows the right languages. The sparrows and foxes and jays are all terrible gossipers and they go where you and I do not. They overhear the wild spirits. Alraun is dreaming up some strange plans."

  "Lilia." Kveldulfs voice dropped to a hush. He laid the knife down. "No doubt, he plans to enthral her with magic and make her his. In truth, he said as much to me. When last we met he sent a hundred of his woodland imps and beasts at me. But you think he is setting his eye on the whole valley?"

  "I believe so." Helg picked up her short, blunt knife, stirred the pot with it, then used the point to drive home her words. "Alraun is a danger to us all, you, me, everyone."

  "Perhaps. But Alraun's folk are fickle. One moment he may summon an army, the next he will dismiss it to listen to his poets. You cannot tell with the Midsummer Folk how their whims will play out."

  "But should the whim hold," muse
d Helg, "Should Alraun raise an army of faer creatures, and make himself master of all the Veld? Well, I will be packing my belongings on a mule. I've no wish to be ruled by a king who did this to me." She raised an arthritic finger and pointed at her puckered eye-socket.

  "Aye," conceded Kveldulf. "Nor would I." Although, a touch of suspicion then crept into his voice. "Of course, you would have special reason to dislike Alraun. If I were to offer to help you, for I think that is what you are hinting at, how do I know it is not just some elaborate plot for revenge?"

  "After all these years? If I were a vengeful sort, I'd have my revenge already. No, Kveldulf, take my advice, folk like you and I ought not dwell on the past. Madness lies that way."

  "He is powerful in his wild woods. Revenge would have been hard won. This might be your first chance at it?"

  Helg's worn, old face frowned. Her cheeks sunk, and her watery eye stared at him. "Look at me Kveldulf. Though not so ancient as you, I feel my years. These hands..." She held out one crooked hand, and her voice grew rich with memories, "Look at my hands. These were once the hands of a midwife. Of a healer. They were soft and agile and beautiful. Now, they are no more than trembling bone and gristle. As twisted and knotted as any branch of ivy." She was right; her fingers were arthritic twists, scored with scars. "It takes a young heart to plot revenge and young hands to exact it. Anger? Rage? Vengeance? No. Not for me." Her hands fell to her side, and her shoulders sagged a little. "You know what would happen if Alraun cast his net of enchantment over the whole Veld?"

  "I have some idea. It would not be pleasant for anyone who lives here now."

  "The land would bloom with beauty, but it would all be illusion. A red apple hiding worms within. And ruling above it all a king of worms, with no care for the pains or joys of lesser things. Travellers would not come here. Our mortal neighbours over the hills would soon fear the Veld, then forget it. In time this little Eorldom would become a fabled memory. The dead would wake and dance with the living. There would be no endings or beginnings, and no free will, just living dolls dancing on strings of magic. And in time, one day, we of the Veld would awake and wonder who among us were the faer folk, and who were the mortals, and then, eventually, we would not even care."

  "And all those within would no longer know what it is to be human. They would be his playthings, in the end."

  Helg nodded, "Hope... love... free will, that what makes the human heart humane, would cease to be. The Veld would be no more than a wild, shaded valley full of wild, shadowy spirits. Spirits who once laughed with human voices. Spirits that would dance and die for their king's amusements."

  They worked in silence for a while. The only sound was the repetitive, spit and thud of Sigurd working his axe outside.

  "I should perhaps have a word with Lilia."

  "I think that would be wise."