Fenrir

11

The thing’s eyes seemed to bore straight through Aelis, the same glittering black gems that had looked at her in the attic. She felt herself trembling and backed into the shadows. Had it recognised her? It looked down at the priest. Perhaps it hadn’t.

It came forward into the candlelight and she could see it properly. It was bone-thin and wrapped in a cloak of black feathers, its black hair stuck into a shock with an oily tar, feathers within it sweeping up into a sort of black crown. Its face, now she could see it more clearly, was a terrible mess of scars, deep but tiny wounds, some festering and swollen, some healed and some still seeping blood. The creature reeked of corpses.

Aelis watched as it approached. The monk flinched as it bent close to his ear and spoke in Latin. ‘The prophet,’ it said. ‘Are you Jehan, who they call Confessor?’

‘I will have no dealings with devils.’

‘I am not a devil. You will work for us, prophet. If you have the gift I can show you how.’

‘How do you speak our tongue, monster?’ said the confessor.

Jehan felt himself shaking, as he often did when he was angry and cursed himself knowing that his enemies might mistake it for fear.

‘I was raised as a monk, for a while.’

‘So you turned your back on Christ.’

‘At Saint-Maurice he found me-’ the man clasped his fist, fingers up, ‘-and then at Saint-Maurice he threw me away.’ He cast his hand down to the floor. ‘Conversions can go both ways, Confessor.’

Jehan swallowed. He recognised the name of the monastery. Saint-Maurice was an Augustinian house to the east, in the mountains of Valais. It was one of the great centres of Christendom, known for its treasures and relics and the song of ages, the laus perennis — the monks had begun to sing the psalms nearly four hundred years before and, working in shifts, had never stopped since. How had this monster come out of such a place?

‘How do you know me?’

‘I have heard of you. I should fear you, I have been told.’

‘Fear God,’ said Jehan, ‘for he reserves special torments for the likes of you.’

The creature smiled. ‘And for you, it would seem.’

Aelis tried to place the thing’s accent. Northern certainly, but not a Dane’s. It was nearer to the merchant’s.

‘Can you make this monk find the girl?’ said Sigfrid. Aelis didn’t understand him but she guessed what he said from his urgency and his gestures.

The Raven nodded, though it replied in Latin. ‘In a short time perhaps, perhaps not. Given longer, yes.’

The king became angry, waved his arm to indicate the whole camp and, Aelis could tell, asked the Raven to be as quick as possible.

‘Then we will try. The method will be quick. It will kill him but we will have our revelation.’ Again the Raven spoke in Latin. Aelis knew that by speaking in a tongue the king understood poorly the creature was in a weird way expressing its superiority, its power even, over the king. And he was threatening the monk.

The king said something in Norse.

‘He thinks you are a risk to him alive, Confessor. Doesn’t he know they will come after your bones, your relics? Should I grind them to dust?’

‘No one will seek me,’ said the confessor.

‘Not so. Even dead you are a rallying point, but let’s not run ahead of ourselves.’

‘How long?’ said Sigfrid.

There was another conversation in Norse. Aelis sensed the king didn’t trust the Raven. The king raised his voice.

The Raven shrugged and bent to where the confessor sat on the floor. In the firelight the confessor’s twisted body reminded Aelis of a melted candle stub, the long form bending over it like a shadow it had thrown.

‘Will you work with us, Confessor? Will you use your abilities to help us? It will cost you little.’ He spoke in Latin.

Silence gave the Raven its answer.

‘Do you know how magic works?’ said the creature.

The monk said nothing but Aelis felt a coldness coming from the Raven, a sense of high and desolate places and of something else she couldn’t quite identify. She was tempted to say it was loneliness, though she couldn’t imagine the creature having any tender feelings at all.

The Raven continued: ‘I do. Through shock. Your thoughts are intertwined, like the weft on a loom. If there is magic in you it is a single thread obscured by many others, the illusions of the everyday, of hungers, lusts, the babble of your priests, the senses and smells of the world. Those illusions must be removed. Something that scars or revolts, or throws the thoughts into chaos is required. Something that cuts the duller threads and leaves the scarlet of the truer, magical self shining through. Your hermits do it in their isolation, so that the thoughts fall in on themselves to reveal the magical self beneath. Your Christ did it on his cross, calling down lightning and causing the dead to walk while those next to him only spluttered and died. Not everyone can achieve this, or, rather, exactly what we can achieve is different. Some people can prophesy. Some can see far in distance but not in time, put their mind into a raven’s body and fly with it on the upper airs. Some can slow time and see everything at half its speed, become mighty warriors. Most can just scream.’

The thing walked around the confessor, looking at him as a man might inspect a market-day pig.

‘Believe what lies you like.’ The comparison of Jesus to a magician had incensed the monk and he was unable to stop himself speaking.

‘Tell me, Confessor, when you first saw, when the visions first came to you, your body was struck as it is?’

‘God blessed me twice that day.’

‘Did the vision produce the affliction or did the affliction produce the vision? And when you see, the affliction gets worse, does it not? I ask my question again. Are the visions the cause or the symptom of your frailties?’

‘It is all from God.’

‘From the fates,’ said the creature. ‘Even the gods must follow the skein that is woven for them.’

‘Then your Odin will die and be replaced by a kinder god, isn’t that what your prophecies say?’

‘We will defy the prophecy. In my time on this middle earth the dead god will rule. He will escape the teeth of the wolf and will live to start a battle that will consume the world and stock the halls of the dead with many heroes. I will see him king over all the world. What happens in eternal time I cannot influence. The wolf will take him eventually but not until I am drinking with the slain in Valhalla.’

The confessor, who was a good reader of men’s voices, sensed something behind the Raven’s words. There was the faintest tinge of deceit, like the quiver in a novice’s voice when he asks to be allowed to go into town with a healer when really he is intending to meet some girl in the market square. Had Christ completely let this man go? The confessor could not believe it. He decided to test him on his faith.

‘You control nothing while you worship idols.’

‘Wrong,’ said the creature. ‘I control you. You will prophesy, monk. You will reveal the girl to us. She is the wolf hook, the thing that draws him on. Do you think the wolf gladdens when he thinks of his death in the final battle? No. Only she spurs him forward to his destiny. She is the fates’ instrument. It has been foreseen.’

‘I will do nothing for you.’

‘You will, one way or another.’

Aelis felt cold. The grey light of the predawn was coming into the house, banishing the shadows of the fire. In a short time she would be visible to the thing again. She moved to the furthest corner of the room, like a new and timid slave hoping to escape notice.

Hugin stood up and turned to Sigfrid. There was a conversation in Norse between them and the Raven pointed north.

Sigfrid looked pale. The creature smiled and said to Jehan, ‘The king is of a tender stomach for a warrior. But he must realise there are no easy ways to magic.’ He gestured at his scarred and torn face. ‘And I should know. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Confessor, the people are calling for me. I have a sick child to cure.’ He went out past the monk into the growing light.