Lord of Slaughter

52

Loys fell, fell through water, fell through air, through darkness pricked with light, through a tree made of light, caught in threads of light.

Above him the pool stretched up like a shaft, a glimmering disc of silver at its top, the threads that suspended him spinning down from three points.

‘I am falling.’

‘You are falling.’

As he’d removed the stone, a tide had swept over him — of water, yes, but of voices and of images, strange emotions of fear, anger, love and hate. New words formed in his mind to describe new ways of feeling. One was like a purr — he could hardly say it, but it reminded him of a cat in the monastery at Rouen that the abbot had joked he was sure sniggered behind his back. Then another feeling like the tight-stomached, dry-throated sensation a warrior has the instant before battle begins. Yet another — a stolid sadness, a resentment, the way an old man resents his body.

Falling, falling, falling still.

‘Where am I?’

‘At the well of fate, where the Norns weave the skeins of men.’

Next to him was a girl no more than thirteen years old, her flesh pale and her eyes eaten. Bubbles were coming out of his mouth and Loys realised that, in some strange way, they must be underwater. He was falling, but he was falling upwards.

He had been at the base of a great tree and now he span up through its roots that stretched out like the feet of mountains — massive, more like things of stone than wood.

Things flashed past him in the dark, faces of light, creatures of light.

He was tumbling but up, towards the stars that spread above like the lights of a great army. Up through branches and leaves, and everywhere the light, pouring out of him, pouring out of the god who flew beside him.

A noise was in his ears, a crashing and breaking of branches. A great thump drove all the wind from him. He was on a strange riverbank. The river flowed beside a path and a broken wall.

‘What boat is this?’ It was a longship which seemed constructed of thousands of tiny petals, pale as bone.

At the prow of the ship stood a man, tall with a shock of red hair. Loys was sure he had seen him at the palace. Here he was not dressed for court. His head was smeared in blood and his body wrapped in a cloak of white hawk feathers.

‘This is Naglfar,’ said the girl.

‘What is it?’

‘A ship.’

He nodded to the tall man.

‘Who is he?’

‘A god. Lord of lies. Enemy of death.’

‘How can a liar be an enemy of death? Lies breed death.’

‘How can you be mortal unless you lie to yourself? Somehow you all think you will live forever,’ said the god, turning to face Loys.

‘Go with us,’ said the girl.

‘To where?’

‘Death’s kingdom.’

‘To do what?’

‘You will see.’

Loys’ mind felt a wide and beautiful thing, horizon deep and shot with stars. He let the dead girl lead him on board the ship, along a gangplank.

‘What is this boat made of?’

‘The nails of dead men,’ said the god. ‘And dead men to row.’

A Viking crew was at the oars, their eyes the eyes of the dead.

A woman sat leaning against the mast — she was red-haired and beautiful but with a terrible scar across the side of her face, the chamberlain was there too. He sat huddled in the stern of the boat, vacant-eyed, seeming mindblown.

‘Is this a ship of the drowned?’ said Loys.

‘Are you drowned?’ said the god.

‘I am in the waters of the well, I think.’

‘What city sits above that well?’

‘Constantinople.’

‘What goddess rules that city?’

‘Hecate.’

‘Ruler of what domains?’

‘Of gateways and thresholds, of the moon and the night,’ said Loys.

‘So you are at the threshold,’ said the god.

‘The waters seek death.’

‘Men who say so presume more than the gods. The waters seek the offer of death. They do not always accept it.’

‘What are these woods? You are the angel Michael,’ said the chamberlain. ‘This is Jordan and I have fallen to the foot of the tree of life that Enoch saw.’

‘My name here is not Michael,’ said the god.

‘What is it?’

‘I have a name for every mood.’

‘What is your mood today?’

‘As black as ever was.’

‘What is the name that suits it?’

‘Loki,’ said the god.

The moon was bright, but in the distance were dark clouds, flashing with fire from below. The river seemed very strange too — a glittering road of white light.

‘I know you,’ said Loys. ‘You are a devil and this is hell.’

‘You fell here with me. What does that make you?’

‘One of the damned.’

‘Justly?’

‘I do not know. To be damned is to be justly damned, for it is God who damns.’

‘I tell you it was unjustly. What did you do but love a woman, a woman marked for death by a darker spirit than mine?’

‘The woman is not here,’ said Loys. ‘That is how I know this is hell. I saw her dying. I…’ He couldn’t control himself and put his hands to his face to shield his tears.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Men do not weep.’

‘Oh, they do,’ said Loki. ‘They weep and they mewl and they ask for their mothers as the blood bubbles at their throat. Their tears drown all pretence of heroism and they see at the last how sweet it would have been to spend a life at the plough or the nets, and they see the fellows they have killed are men just like them. How petty pride seems with a spear in your belly.’

The boat was moving. Bollason took an oar, Vandrad another, other Vikings too — the men who had taken him to the Numera.

‘The slaughtered sons are coming back to the carrion god, ravenous for his blood. We must cross the bridge of light,’ said Loki.

The longship glided down the river under the metal moon.

‘I am dead,’ said Loys. ‘Without her I want only death. Oblivion.’

‘My word, you don’t ask much, do you? Oblivion — whose lure is deeper than rubies and gold, to be as unmindful as a stone — the gods grant that rich prize to so few who ask.’

‘I ask,’ said Loys.

‘I know,’ said Loki. ‘Your task here is to seek death. King Death.’

He could not tell how long they had been sailing. A long time, it seemed. A week? Many years? Under the moonlight his hands were strangely beautiful, delicately wrought. God’s work, he said to himself. God’s work.

The boat was slowing and approaching the bank. The night was windless, and the trees stood shining in the moonlight, as still as if the smiths of the emperor’s court had made them from silver to stand in the palace courtyard. The longship grounded by the broken wall, Bollason jumping ashore to tie a mooring rope around a stump.

‘Alight,’ said the god, ‘for a light, a light from which old grim guts cannot hide.’

Loys stepped onto the riverbank. The night was cool but not unpleasant, and the woods were fragrant, noisy with insects and the calls of owls.

In the wall he saw a single little lamp burning, others beside it dead and cold. He went to it. The flame seemed weak. He touched it and saw her — Beatrice in the frosty woods, her horse steaming in the dawn sun, Beatrice naked in the bed next to him, standing by the prow of the merchant ship that had brought them to Constantinople, the blue waters of the Aegean turning her eyes to turquoise. The warmth of the flame was like the warmth of her touch, the sound of the wind in the woods like the sound of her voice and the moon hung above him, like God’s eye, judging his worthiness to call her his wife.

‘The dead do not wait,’ said the pale god from the ship. ‘Make the needful action, that necessary gesture.’

Loys took another lamp from the wall. It was wet so he dried the wick on his tunic and upended it so oil ran onto the wick. Then he lit it off the flame of the single burning lamp. It flared, guttered and finally caught.

‘This is my lamp,’ said Loys, standing back from the wall.

‘Yet you will not use it to see your way.’

‘What will I use it for?’

‘What is a lamp ever used for? To banish darkness.’

Carrying his lamp carefully, Loys climbed back onto the ship, which pulled away from the bank and glided forward again. At first he thought they were bound for Constantinople, for the sky ahead seemed to bubble with black clouds and fires flashed and flickered in the far distance.

The shore disappeared. The white of the moonlit river faded as red, gold and blue replaced it, three separate streams of light playing beneath the keel of the ship, shooting rays from its spars and sails. Loys put out his hands to watch the beams stream from his fingers.

‘Where are we?’

‘Bifrost.’

‘What is that?’

‘The bridge between the realm of men and the realm of gods. The rainbow in its colours three.’

‘We can sail across a bridge?’

‘Is it less marvellous that you could walk across light?’

‘The women at the well spun light.’

‘They spin everything. We are an expression only of their spinning.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘To the lands of death. To the Dark of Moon plain.’

‘Who are these who travel beside us?’

Loys was aware of other shapes in the streams of light. Men? Spirits? Demons? He couldn’t tell. Some seemed like giants with burning heads, some like corpses with eaten-away faces and rotted eyes, some like misshapen men, stooping and running, some like giant women. Demons all, he was sure.

‘The enemies of death. They follow you and your light.’

‘I do not want followers like these.’

‘The world hears too much of wanting. There is no choice here. Only destiny.’

‘Where shall I go?’

‘Where you are fated to go.’

The streams of light intensified until Loys had to shield his eyes to see. A great roar, screaming and a smell of burning. Loys fell to the deck of the ship, cradling his little lamp as he did. The light around him was intense and even with his eyes tight shut he saw red on the inside of his eyelids. The roaring grew louder and louder, and he recognised it for the sound of battle — the monstrous smithy sound of steel on steel, thumps and crashes along with the stink of earth and fire. The longship smashed into solid ground, and Loys was thrown out, the impact as he landed driving all breath from him. A taste of ash and grit was in his mouth. Miraculously the little lamp he’d carried from the wall was still in his hands.

When he opened his eyes he saw its light still burned, but the world was wild.