Lord of Slaughter

55

Elifr saw Snake in the Eye pull Beatrice into the pool and push her under, but held fast to his task and what the well had told him to do. He could not go to her. The wolfman had to see the ritual through, had to give the scholar time to do what he needed to do. He couldn’t even shout to Snake in the Eye to stop, but kept up his mumbled chant, leaving part of his mind on that shore where he waited for Loys, part in the chamber.

Loys had struggled at first but then he had become calm and was easy to hold. Elifr held him still, looking up at the wolf. A great gash ran along its torso all the way up to its chest. Its head lolled and it panted heavily.

‘Come on, come on!’ Elifr spoke to Loys. ‘Do what is necessary. Do what you have to.’

The wolf was now on its side in the water, its head below the surface. It was still. As he peered through the dead light of the glowing rocks he saw something like a coil of pale rope spill from the animal’s belly. The white-haired warrior had done for it. Had it died before the god? Snake in the Eye was still alive. Elifr felt weak with elation. It was done, the act was done, the wolf was dead and the god still lived in Middle Earth.

The scholar was coming, flowing back like light trapped in light, like a shining fish lifted in a net of light. Elifr took his hand, brought his consciousness fully back to the chamber, and the scholar came spluttering to the surface of the pool. Elifr pulled him towards the nearest place he could leave him with his head above the water. He dragged him across the haunches of the great wolf, lifted him up onto the body and then turned to Snake in the Eye. The boy let go of Beatrice and faced Elifr.

‘All my friends come back to me!’ he said. ‘All the pretty runes dancing for my pleasure!’

Elifr leaped on the boy, knocking him back, his hands around his head, one thumb in an eye. Snake in the Eye fell back into the water as the wolfman tore at him, but then Elifr went limp and his grip loosened. The boy stood up, one eye a bloody mess, but his face wild with elation.

‘They’re here! The runes that kill and slaughter. I am lord of death! Lord of slaughter! I am Odin made flesh on earth and the wolf my enemy lies dead!’

‘You have killed her,’ said Loys.

Snake in the Eye watched as Loys licked the blood from his fingers.

‘I have. And I will kill you. But there is no candle on the wall for you, sir. Pray, tell me who you are. Hurry now, I have a world to slaughter.’

Loys bent down into the water and picked up something bright and curved and wicked. Bollason’s sword. He waded towards the boy.

‘Why do my runes back away from you? Why do they not chime? Who are you, sir? I ask you again.’

‘I am a wolf,’ said Loys, and he cut off the boy’s head. Snake in the Eye collapsed at the knees, his unburdened neck a blood fountain, his head toppling into the water behind him. Then the light, the bright and burning light, bleached all vision away.

Loys had the impression of symbols flashing past him, signs that were more than signs, things that seemed to express the fundamental nature of humanity, of gods, of animals, of weather and of things stranger and more incomprehensible than any of them.

The runes flew through the tunnels, some falling back into the water, some alighting on the shelf where Styliane lay, others shrieking down into the lightless caves.

Loys blinked his eyes back to usefulness and waded on, throwing the sword up into the passageway and pulling Beatrice up from the water. He felt strong as he lifted her.

He got her to dry ground and held her. She was not breathing. He felt for her heart. There was a faint beat, but then it stopped.

‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘Remember, I hold you to life. I hold you to life.’

But she was gone and he could do nothing but hug her to him. The lamp finally guttered and died and with it the glow of the rocks. He sat in the dark, listening to his own breathing, cold and waiting to die. The darkness was not true darkness, he realised, or rather some new sense was in him. The rocks had a flavour to them and he could smell the currents of air that drifted down from the surface, taste the smoky sky of Constantinople. He didn’t feel tired at all. In fact, he felt quite well, despite his ordeal.

‘I have been to dark places and brought back bright things.’ A voice behind him. Styliane. He heard her splashing through the pool.

‘How can you find me?’

‘I see you and I see who you are, what you have become. I have entered the story too.’

‘I have become nothing.’

‘The wolf put his eyes on you. He’s in you now. Just as these signs are in me. There are three here in the darkness beside me. One for each facet of the goddess. I wonder where the others went.’

‘What are the runes?’

‘Magic. Earned in sacrifice at the well.’

‘What did you give?’

Styliane took Loys’ hand and put it to her face. On one side he felt the orb of her eye below her lid. On the other was a swollen ruin.

‘That,’ she said, ‘and all my happiness. I saw my sister in the well. She is still here, I think, but she has failed. She is mad now and our future is in her grip.’

‘How so?’

‘You and I will always find each other, scholar. The gods bind us together.’

Loys didn’t want to think about the implications of what she was telling him.

‘Can you help my wife?’

‘No, but you will find her again. She will be reborn. That has always been her fate. It always will be, until you can find a way to stop it.’

‘Reincarnation is a heresy.’

‘But for her you know it to be be true.’

Loys said nothing but he felt very deeply Styliane was right. A sense had come over him when the wolf put its eyes on him — a sense of old time, of lives before, of the future stretching out.

‘The child, will it live?’

‘Perhaps there is no need for it to die. It still lives. These bright symbols can bring it forth.’

Loys thought for a second he had lost consciousness. He saw himself lying on a grassy bank by a river, warmed by the sun. The smell of meadow grass was in his nose, the buzz of bees in his ears. Beatrice was at his side, beautiful. And then he was somewhere else — a high place, by a fire, looking out over a wide valley. She was with him again and he never wanted to be anywhere else.

But then the dark, the tunnel and the damp.

Something mewled. A child. Styliane pushed it into his arms and he felt its warm life against the coldness of his chest.

‘The blood waters have made it plain. He tried to kill it. Snake in the Eye didn’t know his purpose here; he was the god in his madness but the baby was the sacrifice that would have let her live. She died defending her child.’

Loys could say nothing, just sat weeping and holding the baby.

Styliane pushed something else into his hand. A stone on a leather thong.

‘Take this,’ she said. ‘It will let you live as you would want to.’

Loys touched its shape in the darkness and knew what it was.

‘This is pagan magic.’

‘It is your salvation.’

Loys did not put it on, but he didn’t cast it aside either.

‘Can you stand?’ said Styliane.

‘I think so. But we can’t find our way out of here without light.’

‘We can,’ said Styliane. ‘The way is clear to me. Here, a third gift for what you have done.’ She put the sword into his hand.

‘Then lead,’ said Loys. The scent of the outside drifted down very strongly. The mosses and minerals of the rocks each had their unique smell, and he could distinguish the deeper-lying odours from those of the surface. A thick odour of blood was all around — on Beatrice, on him, on the child. The baby clung to him and cried.

He found his wife in the darkness and kissed her.

‘If you come back,’ he said, ‘I will find you. We will not let demons or even death thwart us. Love is stronger than death. You will come back.’ He squeezed her hand and kissed it for the last time.

He could not get her out, would not visit that place again. This would be her grave. He prayed:

‘In company with Christ, who died and now lives, may she rejoice in your kingdom, where all our tears are wiped away.

Unite us together again in one family, to sing your praise for ever and ever.’

Then he followed Styliane. She went up through the tunnels, back the way her mother, sister and brother had come all those years before. Loys cradled the baby, the sword under his arm, the stone in his hand. They came out into the open air on the hill with the boulders, where Loys kissed his daughter, the child of blood, and looked down on the great city of Constantinople shining under brightening skies.