Land of the Silver Dragon

ELEVEN

Thorfinn and I sat for some time, both of us deep in our thoughts. I guessed he was still lost in the Dragon’s tale, perhaps grateful that this kinsman of his had had such a timely rescue from the powerful object that was slowly stealing his soul. I had heard of such things. Gurdyman, who enlightened me, left me in no doubt as to their danger.

Even while I was thinking about Thorfinn, something was batting at the edge of my mind, trying to attract my attention. I did as I’ve been taught in such situations, deliberately slowing my breathing, relaxing my body and stilling my thoughts. Quite soon, I understood.

I understood a lot; it was as if a mist had cleared, revealing the sun shining on a bright image. I maintained my silence for a little longer while I worked out how best to tell Thorfinn what I now believed I knew.

‘It seems to me,’ I said quietly, ‘that the Dragon could not risk continued possession of his shining stone.’ I sensed Thorfinn stiffen as his attention flew back to me, but he did not speak. ‘He knew that it was too dangerous an object; for him, anyway. He realized that his only hope was to abandon it.’

‘Abandon is the wrong word.’ Thorfinn’s tone was harsh. ‘He could never have done that, for the stone was far too important to him. It was,’ he added heavily, ‘an heirloom, and it belonged to his line until the end of days.’ He paused, as if about to pursue that thought, but evidently changed his mind. He shook his head, muttered something, then turned back to me. ‘But yes, you are right. He understood that it was too powerful for him, and he had no option but to leave it in the safe keeping of another. Not for ever,’ he added urgently, as if I had protested, ‘but until such time as he should have a son, and that son would be ready to take possession of the stone. To try his own strength against it,’ he murmured, his voice dropping to a whisper.

Until he had a son, I repeated to myself. Yes, that would be the way of it. Already the stone had passed through the hands of four generations, and family tradition would no doubt insist that the Dragon’s son had his turn.

‘The Dragon left it with the little healer, didn’t he?’ I said. I suppose I was guessing, but I felt the confidence that comes when you’re right. ‘And …’ Something else occurred to me, and it was all I could do not to yell in triumph. ‘And the long trading mission to familiar shores that you spoke of was to somewhere in the fens, wasn’t it?’ He didn’t answer, but I sensed an easing of tension in him, as if, for some reason, he was pleased I’d worked it out. ‘The healer lived somewhere near where I live, and she took the shining stone and hid it in a safe place. Now the Dragon’s son must have grown to manhood, and he wants it, and so your people sent Einar to go and look for it, and he broke into the places where members of my family live and … and …’

I stopped, for my bright confidence had cracked and broken, and my clever theory fell in ruins at my feet. Two things about it deeply disturbed me: first, no matter how I tried, and bearing in mind that I knew from first-hand experience that Einar had a terrible temper and readily lashed out with his huge fists, I found all at once that I could no longer see him as the ruthless killer of Goda’s mother-in-law and my aunt Alvela.

Was this the reason why I’d had to work so hard to remind myself he was a murderer? Because I’d been wrong about him, and deep down I knew it?

His people would not have sent him out to perpetrate such violence, no matter what the goal. I just couldn’t believe it. It was always possible that they did not know he was a killer, but I couldn’t really make myself believe that, either. They were clannish, here. Younger generations revered their honoured elder and did what he told them.

But somebody had come looking. The other shocking thing about my theory was that, whoever the searcher was, he had concentrated his hunt on the dwellings of my own kin. Which meant …

Who was she? I am the family’s bard, the keeper of the traditions, the one whose job it is to memorize the long kinship lists, the family trees. Where, among all those people, was there a healer? Edild, of course, but the description of the young woman did not really fit her.

I spun round to Thorfinn. ‘How many years ago did this happen?’ I demanded. ‘When did the Dragon leave his precious shining stone in the fens?’

Thorfinn looked at me steadily. ‘Some sixteen, seventeen years before Duke William arrived,’ he said. His voice, I thought, was carefully neutral.

So that was 1049 or 1050. Definitely not Edild, then; she hadn’t been born. Who were the healers in my Granny’s generation? She was the bard, the storyteller, and I couldn’t recall her ever having mentioned a healer. She’d had two elder sisters, but they hadn’t had any particular talents beyond those that everyone needs to survive out in the fenland. What of my mother’s kin? She had come from shepherding stock, and her family had worked a compact but thriving smallholding. She came from a long line of big, fair women just like her, but there could easily have been a small, dark one among them. Had this unknown woman been the healer summoned to tend the Dragon when he’d been so badly beaten? It was the best I could come up with. It fitted, since the dwelling places where the giant had searched were as closely attached to my mother’s kin as to my father’s: Goda, Elfritha and I were her daughters, and poor Alvela had been her sister-in-law.

I tried to think which of my mother’s aunts had been a healer, and I thought I recalled her speaking of a woman who had been skilled with plants and the preparation of medicines. Ama? Aeda? Cross with myself, I could not bring it to mind.

Thorfinn was waiting. I drew a breath, and said, ‘I believe that the woman who healed the Dragon was an ancestor of mine, on my mother’s side. While she tended him, he learned to care for her and to trust her, so that, when he made the momentous decision to part from his magic stone, he left it in her keeping. She hid it away in such a secure place that it has lain there ever since. Except now, the Dragon’s son wants to claim his inheritance, and, on his behalf, Einar — ’ no, not Einar, I was sure of it — ‘someone has been to the fens to search for it.’

I was not entirely pleased with my account. I knew I was right in essence; it was just in the details that it threatened to fall apart.

Thorfinn studied me for a long moment. Then, nodding, he said, ‘You have made deductions, and leapt from what you know to what seem to you reasonable conclusions. You are right in some things, for it was indeed to the fenland that the Dragon travelled, and, as you surmise, there that he left his treasure in the hands of the woman who healed him.’

‘But was she …?’ Was she my mother’s aunt? I wanted to ask.

Thorfinn, it seemed, wasn’t going to tell me. ‘The stone has been hidden these many years,’ he went on, ‘and now it is sought, most urgently.’ He closed his eyes, as if suddenly weary. ‘Not, however, by the son of the Dragon; for, having grown up with the story of what the shining mirror almost did to his father, the son has, until now, been content to leave it where it lies.’ Opening his eyes, he turned to me.

The look in his eyes made me shrink away.

‘The stone’s existence is known of outside the Dragon’s immediate kin,’ he said. There was despair in his voice. ‘A feud has been waged, through three generations, between two siblings and their descendants. The Dragon’s mother — Thorkel’s granddaughter — had a younger brother, who was a lesser being than his sister in every quality save malice and spite, and who grew up resenting his sister to the point of loathing. Two generations later, his grandson believes it is his sacred mission to restore his branch of the family to what he sees as their rightful position, in ascendancy over the Dragon’s line. To this end, he has embarked on a search for the stone, which we hope and pray with all our hearts will not succeed.’

I was shivering, and it wasn’t from the cold. ‘Is he big, bearded and red-haired?’ I whispered.

‘He is,’ Thorfinn said solemnly. ‘His name is Skuli, and he is warped by evil.’

And, I could have added, he broke his way into our homes and killed my kinswomen.

My triumph over having deduced correctly was short-lived. I remembered, far too graphically, what this man warped by evil had done to my kin.

Oh — oh — was he still there, casting his huge and threatening shadow over everyone I loved? Here was I, so far away, made impotent by distance; I might now know what he’d been looking for, but that was no help whatsoever to my family, because there was no way of telling them. He believed that they stood between him and what he so powerfully desired. The fact that they had no idea about either the stone or its whereabouts wasn’t going to be any protection at all …

I leapt up. I would have run to my pony and galloped away, except that Thorfinn grabbed a fold of my skirt and held me back.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

‘I’m going home!’ I cried. ‘They need me — I’m the only one who has any idea what this is about! I’ve got to go home!’

His hold tightened, and slowly he pulled me back to sit down beside him. ‘You are full of courage, little one,’ he said, and I heard the very edge of amusement in his tone.

‘They’re in danger,’ I whispered. To my shame, I felt tears well up in my eyes.

What happened next was entirely unexpected: Thorfinn made a quiet sound, almost of distress, and, putting his great arms round me, drew me down against his mighty chest. It was the sort of all-embracing, enfolding hug that my father used to give me when I was a child and had fallen over — when, come to think of it, I was a young woman, secretly crying in the night because the man she loved was far away and she had no idea when she would see him again.

For a while, I just surrendered to it. Thorfinn might not be my beloved father, but, in that moment, he was a good substitute. Some faint, soft, tender chime of memory was ringing … prompted by a small, comforting movement, or some smell common to all big, fatherly men? I didn’t know. Before I could isolate it and pin it down, it was gone.

‘It was not out of malice that I had you brought here,’ Thorfinn said presently. ‘It was, child, for your own safety.’

My head shot up at that. ‘My safety?’ I cried incredulously. ‘All those miles in Einar’s ship, and his fist to keep me in my place?’

‘I regret the fact that he hit you more than I can express,’ Thorfinn said, and I sensed the anger simmering in him. ‘Einar is repentant, and in time I believe he will find a way to make recompense. You … it is no excuse for what he did, Lassair, but unwittingly your words to him touched a very raw spot.’

It was a time for honesty. ‘It wasn’t unwitting at all,’ I muttered. ‘Einar had just abducted me, and I was very scared. I really needed a way of hitting back at him, and that taunt about him sailing a cargo boat instead of a longship was the best I could think of.’

Thorfinn gave a rueful laugh. ‘You could not have come up with a more piercing thrust had you tried,’ he observed. Then he added, so softly that I only just heard, ‘The original Malice-striker was my ship.’

Yes, I thought. Of course. ‘What was she like?’

‘She was long and lean, and she rode the wave tops like a sea bird gliding on wide wings,’ he said, the love and the longing very evident in his voice. ‘She was light, with a shallow draught, and her high courage and adventurous spirit were daunted neither by fierce seas nor by winding rivers leading into unspeakable darkness.’ He paused. ‘I drove her too hard,’ he muttered. ‘I used her unkindly, for I …’ Abruptly he broke off. He was silent for a moment, and I sensed he was undergoing some internal struggle. When he spoke again, there was a cheerfulness in his tone that even a child would have known to be forced.

‘Well, Einar’s craft has inherited her great spirit,’ he said with an unconvincing smile. ‘The dragon head now rises up over his knarr, and a fine ship she is.’

It was, I felt, time — and not only for my sake — to return to what he’d just been saying, about the reason I’d been taken there. ‘You were about to tell me why you had me brought to you,’ I said.

He looked down at me. ‘I was,’ he agreed. ‘Child, as you will have surmised, Skuli Ondarson knows the general location of the shining stone. He has two very powerful motives for finding it: first, he believes that the precious inheritance should have passed down the male line, in which case it would have gone to his grandfather and not his great-aunt, and now he would be the rightful keeper.’

‘Why didn’t it?’ I asked.

‘Because Thorkel and his son Ondar perceived too clearly the relative merits of Ondar’s daughter and son,’ Thorfinn said, ‘and, while the one — his daughter Gudrun — was a worthy keeper of the magic stone, there was no doubt that the other — Ondar’s son Arnor — would have turned its dangerous and formidable power to further his own dark ambition.’

‘And this son, this Arnor, was the red-headed giant’s grandfather.’ I was trying to get the lines of the family clear in my mind.

‘Yes, Lassair. Arnor is dead, but Skuli is very much alive, although it would be better for many people — not only us — if it were not so.’

‘I saw him,’ I said faintly. ‘I’m sure I did.’ In my mind I relived that moment on the edge of the village, when I’d seen a man, or perhaps a vision-man, on my way back from checking Granny’s grave.

A real-life man, it now appeared. And one who presented a grave danger to me and mine …

‘It’s very possible,’ Thorfinn agreed, ‘for he was close on your tail, and he would have taken you if the chance had presented itself.’ From his grave tone, I understood that being taken by this Skuli was something to be avoided at all costs. ‘It is also possible that it was Einar you saw, for he too had been watching you.’

‘Einar was …’ I wasn’t sure I understood.

‘We knew that Skuli had gone in search of the shining stone,’ Thorfinn said patiently. ‘We knew too that he would be totally ruthless, and let nothing get in the way. He would fight, despoil, kill; he would, if he got his hands on someone he believed was aware of the stone’s whereabouts, torture the truth out of them.’

‘I thought that was why I’d been brought here,’ I said in a small voice. ‘I thought Einar was going to force me to tell him something I don’t even know.’ The echo of that fear shivered up through me. I tried to dismiss it. ‘I was nearly right!’ I added, trying to laugh.

‘No you were not, child,’ he said gravely. ‘It was no part of our plan to do you harm.’

But I barely heard. My mind was racing, trying to absorb all I’d been told. Something occurred to me: ‘You said just now there were two reasons why Skuli wants the stone. What’s the second one?’

Thorfinn gave a deep sigh, as if the burden was suddenly too much to bear. ‘Because of one specific quality which it possesses,’ he said heavily. ‘There is a particular journey he desperately wishes to embark upon, and he has convinced himself that only by possessing the shining stone, and harnessing its power, will he find the way.’

I frowned. ‘But I thought — didn’t you say that the stone’s main quality was that it helped you look inside yourself?’

‘Yes, I did,’ Thorfinn confirmed. ‘But that, as I’m sure you realize, is not the voyage Skuli has in mind. No, child — it is another of its powers that he desires.’ His voice dropped to a whisper and, leaning towards me, he murmured, ‘He believes that the place where he is bound can only be reached with the aid of the spirits, and he intends to use the stone to manifest them to help him.’

He must be mad, was my first, violent reaction. No man in his right mind would even consider something so dangerous. Fleetingly I wondered where this place was that Skuli so desperately wanted to go, and what he hoped to achieve by finding it at such peril. Then, slowly, it dawned on me: he had to be stopped. Whatever it took, Skuli must not be allowed to get his hands on the shining stone.

I even began to view my own abduction in a slightly different light.

‘Do you understand now?’ Thorfinn asked. ‘Skuli had located your village, and he knew where the rest of your family lived. He knew about your wizard friend in Cambridge, and he was waiting to grab you as soon as you ventured out alone. But he had reckoned without Einar, who already knew much of what Skuli had to work to discover, and who, perhaps with the might of right on his side, succeeded in getting to you before Skuli did. It was, I understand, a close-run race.’

I saw myself in memory, blithely striding along, thinking about home and food. Not one but two giant-sized men had been stalking me, and the only, tiny, sound I’d heard to give away the fact of their presence had come just before I was taken.

‘They walk softly on the ground, for such big men,’ I said. I was still trying to suppress thoughts of what Skuli might have done to me, and it helped to think about something else.

‘They do,’ Thorfinn agreed. ‘Both are hunters, and learned young how to tread without making a sound.’

Hunters: arrows, knives, blood, pain, guts, death. Not a good image. ‘So Einar brought me all the way here to keep me safe from … er, to keep me safe,’ I said quickly. ‘Couldn’t he just have taken me on board his ship and sailed up and down the coast for a while? Why did he have to bring me so far?’

Thorfinn did not immediately answer. When eventually he spoke, it was as if he was replying to a different question entirely.

‘Tonight, Freydis will continue with her storytelling,’ he said. ‘Now, child, I am growing cold. Fetch the ponies, and we will return to the homestead.’

‘Now,’ Freydis began, ‘I shall tell the tale of the Perilous Voyage, for it is a journey that many of our kinsmen have made, and one that many did not survive.’

It was late in the evening. The tables had been cleared of everything except the mugs and the flagons of ale, and two or three torches had been set in the walls. The fire in the long hearth was glowing, shedding soft light on the attentive faces sitting on either side. As Freydis announced the subject of her tale, there were one or two murmurs, and some of her audience turned to look at her in surprise. Had they expected her to pick up Thorkel’s story? The previous night, after all, she had left us with that disturbing image of a man visiting a strange port and returning to his crew not the same man. Not that it mattered to me, of course …

I sensed someone watching me. Turning, I saw it was Thorfinn. He gave an almost imperceptible nod.

Then I understood. Freydis’s tales were for my benefit, for I was the stranger; I was probably the only one who had never heard the stories before. As far as I was concerned, there was no need for Freydis to relate the end of Thorkel’s tale and its aftermath, for Thorfinn had already done so.

I settled back to hear about the Perilous Voyage.

‘They went to trade their furs, their amber and their walrus ivory,’ Freydis said, her eyes glittering in the firelight as she looked around the circle of her audience, ‘but, for many, that was merely a pretext: in their hearts, they knew that what they sought was adventure. And where better place to seek it than the vast continent that spread out to the south and east? In their light, nimble ships, they had the means of penetrating deep into its secrets, returning home with tales of giants and river monsters, whirlpools and rapids, and cities sparkling with jewels beneath a sun that burned like fire.’ In a whisper judged perfectly to reach the intimate circle around her and no further, she added, ‘Who, after all, can resist the summons of the unknown?’

She told of the men who discovered the inland route from the northern seas to those of the south; of how, when the waterways petered out, the brave sailors got out of their craft and carried them overland to the next river. Bending to the oars once more, they rowed until they were exhausted, then did it all over again the next day. They fought hunger, fatigue, homesickness, as well as more tangible enemies such as starving wolves and hostile tribesmen. On they went, travelling almost due south now, until the great northern forests thinned and disappeared and they emerged on to the steppes.

‘Then, when they had already travelled so far that home was but a memory,’ she went on, her voice strengthening, ‘they came to the most terrifying obstacle of all: forty miles of rapids, formed of no fewer than seven cataracts; fearsome chasms between high rock walls where the river plunged like a rip tide condensed into a narrow funnel.’ She spun slowly round, letting the image sink in. ‘They gave them names, those brave sailors,’ she said, respect very evident in her voice. ‘The Gulper. The Sleepless. The Island Force. The Yeller. And, when each had been overcome and the men were desperate for rest, they came to the fiercest of all. Some called him Ever-fierce; some, simply, Impassable.’

Impassable. Could there be, I wondered, a more daunting name?

‘If they managed to do the impossible and come safely through Impassable,’ Freydis continued, ‘still more swirling waterfalls, rapids and unexpected descents awaited them, until they began to fear they had passed unwittingly into some watery hell from which the only escape was death.’

Again, she fell silent, slowly looking round at us all. ‘There was only one way to survive the rapids,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘and that was to do as they had done between the waters of the northern rivers and carry their craft, around the wild white waves. The prudent followed the portage tracks all the way. The adventurous — some would say the foolhardy — chose only to avoid the hungry maws and the sharp teeth of the waterfalls, opting to shoot their slender ships like arrows down the broiling white water, riding the angry waves like fierce, brave horses.’

I tried to imagine it, but my heart quaked at the very thought. How had they found the courage to risk their ships — the only means by which they could hope one day to return to their distant homes — amid those thundering waters? How could they dare risk their lives?

As if she had picked up my thought, Freydis was nodding. ‘Many perished,’ she said, her voice low. ‘The survivors set up a great stone, on which they marked in runes the names of the dead. That stone,’ she added softly, ‘is still in use today.’

Into my mind flew an image of a bearded giant, wet, spent, knife in hand as he carefully picked out the rune marks that stood for his dead friend. He was muttering under his breath — a prayer, no doubt — and he had tears in his pale blue eyes …

‘Now, at last, the way became easier,’ Freydis was saying, calling my attention back to her tale, ‘for the river broadened out and slowed its hectic pace, and the sailors could raise their sail and have a rest from the oars. In time, the river emptied into the smaller inland sea, and from there it was an unchallenging trip down the western shore until, finally, the Great City came into view.’

The Great City. I had heard the name: in fact, quite a lot of what Freydis had just recounted seemed vaguely familiar. I closed my eyes — she was now describing the city’s wonders — and let my mind go blank.

Almost instantly, I heard Gurdyman’s voice inside my head as, together, we pored over his map: One such voyage led to their Great City.

Its name, I remembered, was Miklagard.

The frustration bubbled up as, once again, I wondered why Gurdyman had elected to tell me of these matters just before I was abducted and brought here. It surely was not simply coincidence. But how had he known? Had he somehow been preparing me? For what?

Somehow (could it be, was it possible?) he had foretold that this would happen; that I’d be stolen away from my home, my family and my friends and deposited here, far in the north, for reasons I was only starting to understand.

‘Shining stone.’

The words slithered into my awareness like a glittering serpent. Freydis had spoken them. Snapping to attention, I listened.

She was telling the story of a man who had not survived the cataracts; who, alone in his vessel while his companions had portaged their own craft, had risked one too many sets of rapids, and been thrown into the hungry, turbulent water as his frail ship broke up into firewood.

‘His kinsmen mourned him long and deeply,’ she said, sounding now as if she was chanting, ‘for, although his heart had begun to turn to the dark, he had led them well and they trusted him. As they stood around the marker stone on which they had carved his name, they vowed their loyalty, and they swore that they would not rest until he had been avenged.’

Avenged? It sounded as if the man’s kin believed his death had been no accident, unless they were planning vengeance on the very cataracts themselves …

‘For it was Arnor’s claim that he had been deprived of what was rightfully his by birth,’ Freydis said, very quietly, ‘and both he and his kin believed that it would have protected them all from the dangers of the Perilous Voyage.’

Arnor. I knew I’d heard the name. Arnor … Yes; he was the younger brother, deemed unsuitable to receive the shining stone. The one who, in Thorfinn’s words, would have turned its dangerous and formidable power to further his own dark ambition. It was as if Thorfinn was repeating his words of earlier, directly into my mind.

So Arnor had not been appointed guardian of his family’s great treasure, because that honour had gone to his sister, I reflected, and he had believed himself robbed of its powers as protective talisman. Yet he had gone on the dangerous voyage anyway, and his life had been lost.

I tried to recall everything that Thorfinn had told me about the stone. I couldn’t actually remember him mentioning it could protect its bearer, but he had said that it allowed the harnessing of the unseen forces of the spirit world. With those at your disposal, I realized, what more protection would you need?

Freydis was winding down to the conclusion of her tale; I was a bard myself, and I recognized the change in her voice, which was gradually turning from stimulating to hypnotic. I felt I could safely miss the end of the story; I had more import-ant things to think about.

I was trying to put it all together: to discover, in truth, what it all had to do with me. Skuli, clearly, wanted to succeed where his grandfather Arnor had failed; this voyage to the Great City must surely be his goal, and he believed that, to make it safely, he needed the shining stone. Yet the Dragon’s side of the family line were equally determined he should not get his hands on the treasure; presumably, they had good reason for not wanting him to reach that goal …

My head was bursting; I could no longer think straight. It was so hard, I reflected crossly, when they were feeding me information so grudgingly.

Around me, people were standing up, stretching, draining their mugs and heading off for bed. There was nothing else to do but join them. With the fervent hope that I would see more clearly after a night’s rest, I headed for my sheepskins and a well-earned sleep.