Land of the Silver Dragon

FIVE

In the morning, I woke refreshed and ready to work. Gurdyman had retired to his crypt the previous evening, and I knew he would be down there all night. He tells me he does sleep — he has a cot and blankets always set ready — but I have my doubts. He has a capacity for concentration that astounds me, and is able to keep going, without a break for food, drink or rest, for a length of time that one would have thought unendurable.

He had instructed me to come and find him when I was up, dressed and fed, and accordingly, once I had tidied away the remains of my breakfast, I trotted off through the house, heading towards the door that opens on to the alley, and, just before it on the left, the twisting passage leading to the steps down to the crypt.

The passage wasn’t there. Where the arched entrance normally was, I found myself face to face with a blank wall. I stopped in amazement, totally confounded. Stupidly I put my hands up, feeling along the stonework, as if my fingers could find what my eyes could not see. What had happened? Where was the passage? Oh, dear Lord, where was Gurdyman? Had he somehow walled himself up in his crypt, destined to remain in that dark, deep, windowless place till he slowly starved to death?

I banged against the wall, fighting panic, listening for the hollow sound that would indicate an empty space on the far side. Nothing. I banged again, feeling a frantic sob rise in my throat. I drew a deep breath, preparing to shout, to scream.

There was a sharp click, and as if by magic the outline of a door appeared in the stones. The door opened, and Gurdyman’s smiling face came into view. He swung the door fully open, pinning it back somehow so that it was no longer visible. He had put it, I guessed, in its usual position. Observant as I pride myself on being, I had never noticed it before.

He must have seen that I’d been alarmed, which is putting it mildly. He said, his face straightening, ‘I’m sorry, child. I did not mean to frighten you.’ His smile crept back. ‘Did you think I had performed some powerful magic, Lassair? Some spell that made a door, doorway and passage vanish as if they had never been?’

Since it was exactly what I had thought, I made no reply.

He took pity on me, emerging from the arch of the doorway and coming to stand beside me. ‘Magic spells can achieve many things, child,’ he said gently. ‘Making doorways disappear as if they had never been is not one of them, or, if it is, it’s magic beyond anything I have ever heard of.’ He patted me on the shoulder. ‘You’re quite pale,’ he observed. ‘You really were frightened, weren’t you?’

I wondered if I should tell him the truth, and decided there was no reason not to. ‘I thought you’d somehow shut yourself in down there, with no means of escape,’ I muttered. ‘I was terrified because I thought it was up to me to get you out, and I had no idea how to do it.’

There was dead silence. Then he said, ‘It would have distressed you, then, if old Gurdyman had carelessly managed to bring about his own demise?’

He was trying not to smile, but I saw no humour whatsoever in the situation. Rounding on him, tears pricking behind my eyelids, I cried, ‘Of course it would have distressed me! I really, really like you!’

It was a silly thing to say; the sort of thing a child would blurt out. I was already framing an apology, but then I caught the fleeting expression in his blue eyes.

He was touched. Very touched.

I wondered how long it was since anyone had told him they cared for him.

We were both embarrassed now. He was the first to recover. Taking my arm, he stepped back into the entrance to the passage and said briskly, ‘See, child, how the door is fastened, flat against the wall? You don’t notice it unless you know it’s there.’ He undid the restraint, closing the door again, with us on the crypt side. ‘Now, from the other side it is as you just saw it: invisible. It is made of stout, thick oak, as you can see, and its outer side is covered with a thin facing of the same stones that form the wall. It blends in, do you see? And it can only be opened from this side.’ He demonstrated.

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘I can see how very effective it is, but why is it necessary?’

He frowned in concentration, as if the answer to my question needed thought. Then he said, ‘Do you remember, Lassair, that I once told you this old house of mine holds many secrets?’ I nodded; it’s something not easy to forget, if you’re actually living in the house in question. ‘You will, I am sure, have noticed the peculiar layout.’

‘You mean the way the crypt isn’t actually beneath the house?’

‘Exactly,’ he said, beaming. ‘I thought you’d have spotted that,’ he muttered. ‘I cannot claim to have designed that feature myself,’ he went on, ‘for the house and its neighbours had stood here for many lifetimes before I took up residence. However, there came a moment when the opportunity arose for me to — ah — acquire the crypt beneath the house to our right — ’ he waved his arm to indicate — ‘and I did not hesitate. That dwelling was then temporarily vacant, and I was able to ensure it remained so while the modifications were carried out. My house, as you no doubt realize, fits in between its neighbours like a serpent weaving its way between rocks.’

It was not a description I liked — not for this house I’d come to love — and, besides, I was not primarily concerned with the how; what I was still burning to know was why. ‘So, you created access to a secret crypt that can be totally hidden from within your house,’ I summarized. ‘For what purpose?’

He looked slightly impatient. ‘Why do you think, Lassair? You have been with me down there in the crypt; you have observed me working. Can you not see why it might be necessary to hide both the crypt and the work?’

I could; of course I could. ‘And also the wi- the person doing the work,’ I added quietly. I’d almost said wizard, but I wasn’t at all sure he’d like the epithet. Not on my lips, anyway, although I had heard him refer to himself thus, usually with a self-mocking smile.

‘Quite so,’ he murmured. He glanced at me, looked away and then met my eyes again. I guessed he was unsure about whether to say what was on his mind. Eventually he did. ‘There have been times when I have offended people,’ he said, with obvious reluctance. ‘On occasions, men of power have resented my … er, things I have done.’ I opened my mouth to ask what sort of things, but he hurried on, not allowing me to speak. ‘It has proved useful, on more than one occasion, to have a safe place in which to hide while the storm wore itself out above me.’ Suddenly he grabbed my arm, turned me round, hurried me back along the passage and said, ‘But we have spent quite long enough on the secrets of my house, Lassair. It is time to get to work!’

Gurdyman never acts without a reason. It was only later that I wondered why he had chosen that particular morning to show me his house’s hiding place.

We settled in the little courtyard, sitting either side of a trestle table on which Gurdyman proceeded to spread a huge sheet of parchment. Fairly soon I recognized what was inscribed on it, although the work was a great deal more advanced than when I had seen it before. Now, the surface was covered in blocks of small, neat lettering and tiny, vivid pictures, illustrating dwellings, palaces, churches, trees, flowers, rivers, and even, on a big expanse covered with ripples that I assumed to be the sea, a ship with a square sail and an imaginative sea monster blowing a huge spout of water from its mouth.

Hrype had been there, that day when I first saw the parchment; it was the day he first introduced me to Gurdyman. He had explained to me what Gurdyman had been trying to do, which was no more and no less than making a visual representation of the voyages of his ancient Norse ancestors. I hadn’t really understood then, when the manuscript was in its early stages. Now that it was nearing completion — if the fact that almost the entire surface of the parchment was covered in pictures, writing or both was any guide — I knew I was going to need some help.

Side by side, Gurdyman and I sat staring down at the manuscript. I remembered how, on that first visit, he’d asked me to try to draw the journey I’d just made from Aelf Fen to Cambridge, and all I’d managed was some rudimentary sketches of trees and barns and a feeble, wandering line that ran off the edge of the parchment long before it got to my village. Now I said, ‘I think I understand what you’re trying to do, but I’m afraid this — ’ I waved a hand over the entire parchment — ‘doesn’t really mean anything to me.’

‘No reason why it should,’ he replied. He drew a breath, held it and then said, ‘I am not the only man attempting to map the world, Lassair.’ Map. I memorized the word. ‘Men of the Church are working on it, although from what I have seen and heard of their travail, their faith is the driving force, and Jerusalem is always presented as the world’s centre: its navel, if you like, for the Greeks used the word omphalos, meaning the same thing. Not that their world’s navel was the Christians’ Jerusalem, of course, but Delphi,’ he added, half to himself. ‘But I digress. This map — ’ he put his fingertips delicately on to his own beautiful work — ‘represents a different aspect of the world; or, more accurately, the world viewed without the bias of faith. Here is the land, and here are the surrounding seas.’ He indicated first a large, amorphous shape covered with pictures and writing, and then the rippled area I’d already identified as water. ‘See these ships?’ Once more he pointed, and, now that I was looking more closely, I saw that the same little images of square-sailed ships were dotted all over the manuscript.

‘Yes,’ I breathed.

‘Behold the voyages of the Norsemen,’ he said eagerly, excitement thrumming in his voice. ‘Into the north and the west they went, heading out on the wide ocean that has no end.’ The left-hand edge of the map, indeed, ended in a mass of ripples, gradually decreasing in size. ‘Down into the great land mass that lies to the south and the east, those long, narrow boats edging ever onwards down the great rivers until finally emerging into seas very different from those that we know in the north. One such voyage led to Miklagard, their Great City,’ he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. I thought for a moment he was going to elucidate; explain, perhaps, that strange name. Miklagard, I repeated silently. But, with a shake of his shoulders, he went on in a different direction. ‘So many miles they travelled, pushing on, on, into strange lands where unknown trees and flowers flourished, where unlikely animals thrived, where a man’s very skin was of a different hue.’

‘What drove them on?’ I whispered. It was all but unimaginable, to think of those men in their frail boats, so far from home, voyaging into the unknown.

‘Trade, for the most part,’ Gurdyman said, grinning as my face fell in disappointment. ‘Trade, or the need to find new lands to live in. I am sorry to give you so prosaic an answer, child, but we must always face the truth, even when it is not what we had hoped it would be.’

A memory surfaced. ‘Hrype’s rune stones!’ I exclaimed, remembering.

Gurdyman looked at me approvingly. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘They were fashioned from the translucent green stone that is brought out of the east.’ He grabbed a fold of the glorious, heavy silk shawl that he always wore and thrust it at me. ‘This, too, reached my hands only after a very long journey. The fabric is precious, Lassair, and silk of this quality is reserved for great kings and emperors.’ He smoothed the shawl delicately, his fingers hovering over the image of a magnificent and surely imaginary bird, with a brilliant blue head and a great fan of tail feathers that seemed to be dotted with eyes. Elsewhere, set against the same dark red background, flowers, leaves and lithe little creatures like weasels flowed together in an intricate pattern. ‘One of my own forebears brought home this shawl. It cost him dear, for in exchange he had to part with a lot more of his skins than he would have liked. But, you see, he fell in love with it, and from the instant he set eyes on it, he knew he had to have it.’ He looked down fondly at the shawl. ‘He brought it for his sister, my mother, whom he dearly loved,’ he added softly, ‘because she was barren and he wished to bring the smile back to her face.’

‘But she can’t have been barren because …’ I began. Then I stopped, because I recalled what he had once told me: My mother was advanced in years, and my birth was treated as a miracle.

Gurdyman acted as if he hadn’t heard. ‘There is a great road that stretches for thousands of miles,’ he began, his face dreamy, ‘and along it pass caravans of merchants, their pack animals laden with the treasures of the east. They travel westwards, and the traders of the west journey eastwards to meet them, and where the two converge there is a great city on the water. It is a city of graceful towers and warm, honey-coloured stonework, and it is riven by a stretch of water where the tides rip through as fast as a galloping horse. There, where men go to trade the greatest treasures of East and West, there are markets so vibrant, so thrilling, that all are reluctant to waste their time in sleep.’

I tried to imagine such a place. I failed. The biggest town I knew was Cambridge, and, although we undoubtedly had our share of merchants from near and far, I hadn’t noticed anyone here being all that reluctant to retire at nightfall.

With a start, Gurdyman came out of his reverie. ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘It is time to begin our lesson.’

Having aroused my curiosity by showing me his map, Gurdyman seized the moment and leapt straight into explaining how the Norsemen had succeeded not only in discovering the routes to the far-flung places they visited but, perhaps even more importantly, had managed to find their way home again.

‘They had faith in their ships,’ he said, ‘those light, sure-footed vessels that were sufficiently shallow-drafted that they did not run aground as they traversed the great river routes. Under sail, the ships were so fast that they seemed to skim over the waves. When the wind failed, the mariners removed the mast to prevent wind resistance and set to at the oars.’

It seemed to me, listening, that Gurdyman must surely have been speaking from personal experience. At what point in his long and eventful life, I wondered, had he sailed with the Norsemen? And how had he come by all this knowledge? He had told me once that he studied with the Moors of Spain when he was a youth, but today’s lesson concerned the wisdom of a very different sort of people …

What he told me next sounded like magic.

He had been describing the ways by which the Norsemen navigated, and much of it was based on sound common sense. Sailing close in to shore, a mariner would look out for familiar landmarks, noting them in sequence, much as I had tried to illustrate my pathetic little attempt at indicating the way home to Aelf Fen by drawing a particular tree, stream or cottage. The mariners also used the Pole Star to steer by; that, too, was familiar, for one of my earliest childhood lessons was how to locate the bright star that lies where the Pointers indicate. If you know where North lies, my father had explained, you can find your way. It’s very easy to become lost in the fens, where it’s often misty and where the land and the water are constantly changing. All fen children learn young how to find the Pole Star. If you’re lost out on the fens overnight and nobody finds you, you’ll likely be dead by morning.

Gurdyman told me of other ways in which the Norse mariners had used the world around them to navigate. Over many generations of observation, they built up a knowledge of the winds: if it was warm and wet, it blew from the south-west; if it was cold and wet, from the north-east. They learned to utilize the length of daylight as an indicator of how far north they were. They observed bird behaviour. They studied the tides. There was more, much more, and it was all based on sound common sense.

Then Gurdyman’s voice changed — I know it did, I heard it — and he moved on to tell me of things that were nothing to do with common sense at all.

‘The Norse ships frequently carried a dragon’s head,’ he said. Fleetingly an image formed in my mind — something I had seen, in a dream, perhaps? Then it was gone. ‘But the dragon was a creature of the sea,’ Gurdyman went on, ‘and drew his power from the water element. Approaching land, the figurehead had to be removed, for the people on the shore feared that the mighty dragon would offend the good spirits of the earth.’ He leaned closer. ‘The mariners believed a ship found her own way home,’ he said, very softly. ‘Their skills helped, of course, but ultimately it was up to the craft herself, and a powerful dragon’s head on the prow would cleave a way through the mists, the storms, the flooding tide and the howling winds and bring the ship safe to port.’

Then the fleeting image clarified.

I saw a ship. It was a long, sleek craft, flying through the spray and the wave-tops like an arrow shot from a bow. Her square sail was stretched taught with the wind that drove her, and the dragon on her prow breathed flame and smoke from its flared nostrils. The dragon — or perhaps it was the ship — spoke a name: Malice-striker.

I became aware of Gurdyman’s voice. It seemed he spoke more loudly, as if calling me back from wherever it was I had strayed. It seemed that now he was quoting the words of someone else; perhaps from one of the sagas of long ago.

‘… and the heavens were heavy with snow-bearing cloud,’ he intoned. ‘The king sent his men to search the skies for a clear patch, so that they might see the Sun and note his position, but no break in the clouds was to be found. Then the king summoned his steersman, and commanded him to tell him where the Sun was, and the steersman took his stone, and, putting it to his eye, stared up at the angry skies. Then, lo! through the power of the sunstone he could see wherefrom came the Sun’s light. Bowing to the king, he said, Behold, Lord, the invisible Sun is no longer hidden, and he indicated to the king where the Sun rode, high above the snow clouds.’

I was there. I was standing beside the king — a tall, broad, burly figure; bearded, a gold circlet on his long hair, wrapped in heavy furs — and I felt his power and his majesty coming off him like the heat from a fire. I saw his steersman, kneeling before him; in his hands he held a square-cut crystal, translucent, softly shining. A deep voice said, solstenen.

‘Sunstone,’ I whispered.

I felt strange. My head was light, as if I hadn’t eaten for a long time. I stared around the familiar little courtyard, but it seemed to be obscured by a wet, cold mist that swirled up out of some unknown, dread source.

Through the mist I thought I heard Gurdyman’s voice; at least, I believed it was his. The voice spoke of a talisman; an object so sacred, so secret, that few even suspected its existence. It came from far away and its powers were legion.

Its powers were terrifying.

It sharpened inner sight; it both permitted entry to the unknown realms and provided protection from their perils. It gave access to …

Abruptly the voice ceased, as if a thick, heavy door had been closed on the speaker. My head spun and, although I tried to cry out, I was dumb. Then I fell forward on to the table, my head cushioned by my arms, and everything went dark.

Gurdyman sent me to bed early. It was, I suppose, a way of acknowledging that he might have pushed me a bit too far in the day’s instruction. While I’m delighted that he treats me not as a fragile female but as someone desperate to learn and ready for any challenge, at times I feel it would be nice if he remembered that we aren’t all as tough and experienced as he is. In fact, I doubt if anyone is, with the exception of Hrype.

I hadn’t wanted to eat, but Gurdyman insisted I cleared my bowl of stew before I went up the ladder to my room. When, at last, I took off my boots and my over gown and lay beneath the covers, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep almost immediately.

I am dreaming. I see a tall, broad, burly figure, no more than a dark outline, on the edge of vision. When I turn to face it — him — there’s nothing there.

I’m in a long, narrow passage. Outside? Within a building? There is no way of knowing. I look up, searching for a ceiling or the night sky, but all I can see is darkness. Whatever is hunting for me is right behind me. I spin round to look and I can’t make it out. I sense hands, long-fingered, reaching out for me. The flesh of my back chills and contracts, as if in terrified anticipation of the touch that must surely come. Suddenly I hear a noise … it’s a thin, whistling sound, almost like a signal … one predator calling to another?

I stifle a moan. They must not know I am there. But then I hear a series of slow thumps, very near.

They have found me.

Then I am thrust abruptly into wakefulness.

Gurdyman was bending over me, his laboured, whistling breathing loud in my ear. He said, very softly, ‘Get out of bed, Lassair, and come with me. We must hide.’

I did as he commanded, grabbing my shawl off the bed and wrapping it tightly round me. Gurdyman preceded me down the ladder, puffing hard, his feet making the thump I had heard in my dream. In a moment of perception, I realized then why it is he was happy to let me sleep in the room that was once his: it was becoming just too much of a struggle for him to climb up there.

I knew where we were going. Keeping very close behind him, I followed him along the passage and through the arched entrance to the corridor that leads down to the crypt. I helped him close and bar the door. Suddenly in total darkness, I was glad of his hand, reaching for mine, leading me on down the steps, left, left again, down more steps, and into the crypt.

He guided me to the left of the entrance, turning me. I felt the softness of his cot behind my legs and sank down on to it. I heard him move across the floor, and there was a sudden spark from a flint. Then the blessed light of a candle shone out, sending the darkness back into the corners.

Feeling sick and shivery, I let out the breath I’d been holding. I stared at Gurdyman. He was standing in the middle of the room, quite still, his head slightly on one side. He was listening.

I could hear nothing but the rapid beat of my alarmed heart. Trying to calm myself, I slowed my breathing. You’re safe, I told myself. Nobody can find you down here.

Who was looking for me? It did not even cross my mind that whoever it was could be after Gurdyman: I knew he wasn’t. The giant must have found out that someone from the family he was targeting — my family — had come here to this house, and he had followed. Now he was about to break in, so that he could search through my belongings, just as he had everyone else’s. Well, he’d be disappointed because …

How had Gurdyman known he was coming?

Hard on the heels of that question, bursting across my consciousness like a shooting star, came another: Was Gurdyman’s assumption right?

He was still standing there; still listening.

I nerved myself to speak. I had to ask; he might be mistaken, and we could be huddling down here for nothing. I drew a breath, opened my mouth …

From above us, over beyond the far wall of the crypt — the direction of Gurdyman’s twisty-turny house — I heard a bump, followed by the very faint sound of slow, stealthy footfalls.

Gurdyman was not mistaken. Somebody was in his house.

Desperate though I was to ask how he could possibly have realized the intruder was on his way, I dared not utter a sound. Instead, I tried to work it out for myself. Perhaps Gurdyman had been out on some mysterious nocturnal errand, and seen a suspicious stranger lurking nearby. He does go out at night, and I know better than to ask where he goes and what he does. He did once mention a sacred well, and a secret midnight meeting of black-cloaked magicians, but I’m all but sure he was teasing me.

I was comforting myself with this pleasantly reasonable solution when I realized something: the cot on which I sat was warm from Gurdyman’s body. He had not been outside; he’d been right here in the crypt.

How else could he have known? Had he heard the intruder in the alley? No, that didn’t seem likely, for down in the crypt we were deep underground. It was only just possible to hear the intruder above us now, as he paced through Gurdyman’s house.

Something else occurred to me. The first sound made by the intruder had not come from the front of the house, where the stout wooden door opens on to the alley. It had come from the rear, where, between it and the narrow alleyway beyond, the little open courtyard is enclosed by a high wall.

A very high, thick wall, which merges on either side with the rear walls of the neighbouring houses, and which is even topped with thatch, as they are.

No man, surely, could have scaled it and dropped down into the courtyard without serious injury. Could he?

This man was a giant, I reminded myself. He was long-legged and very strong. Very probably, he was capable of feats beyond the scope of normal men.

My fear overcame me. I crawled to the back of the little cot and curled up with my back to the wall, draping my shawl over my head and face so that only my eyes were visible. It was a senseless act, really, for if the intruder found the hidden door, he’d be down here in a flash and no shawl in the world would hide me from him.

As if he had picked up my thoughts, Gurdyman turned to me, giving me a reassuring smile. Very quietly he whispered, ‘Nobody yet has discovered the secret, child, although many have searched the house. Do not be afraid.’

I repeated those last four words, over and over again. After some time, I realized that the all-but-undetectable sounds from above had ceased.

Gurdyman looked at me. ‘Can you sleep there, on my cot?’ he asked softly.

I nodded. Now that the threat had gone — or so I hoped — I was appreciating how tired I was.

He came across to me, reaching for a folded blanket and covering me with it. ‘Then do so,’ he said. ‘The intruder has gone, but he may still be outside, alert for any sound or movement within the house. It would be wise not to venture back up there until morning.’

I snuggled down under the blanket. ‘What about you?’ Fond as I am of Gurdyman, I did not welcome the thought of sharing a bed with him.

He grinned, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. ‘I have much to do,’ he said. ‘I shall be over there — ’ he pointed — ‘at my work bench.’ He reached out his hands, placing them either side of my head. His touch was warm and comforting, and I felt my mind fill with calm, gentle thoughts. ‘Sleep, Lassair,’ he intoned.

I slept.