The Land of the Silver Apples

Chapter Forty-six UNLIFE

They ran down the long stairs and along the halls, passing dungeons that might contain prisoners. Jack remembered King Yffi’s words: Some of our prisoners have disappeared from the dungeons. We find their chains empty, though unlocked. Whatever lurked down here, it was too late to worry about it now, Jack thought as he passed the grim metal doors.

But he realized another problem as soon as the trail began to go down and the light to fail. “Torches!” he cried. “We haven’t got torches!”

“Can you draw fire with your staff?” Pega asked.

“It won’t work without something to burn.” Jack looked around frantically, but the halls were empty.

“I think I can find the way,” said Thorgil. Jack and Pega stared at her.

“It’s pitch-black down there and the trail twists around. Even the Bugaboo got confused,” said Jack.

“Rune taught me how to remember my way in the dark. It’s a little like what he does in the sea.”

Jack remembered, long ago when he’d been a prisoner of the Northmen, how Olaf One-Brow had lowered Rune into the sea. The Northmen’s method of finding land was to go in one direction until they bumped into something, but they had fantastic memories. A beach, once seen, was never forgotten. Water, once tasted, was never confused with water a mile away.

And Rune was the best. He saw the sea as a good farmer saw his fields. He knew the shape of it, its various colors and moods. He observed how the birds lifted their wings as they felt the currents of the sky. He sniffed the air for smoke and fresh-cut peat, for pine and juniper. He tasted the sea itself, to detect the presence of invisible, freshwater streams or of cold welling up from the depths—the result being that the old man always knew exactly where he was.

“You can do what Rune does?” Jack said.

“I have not the years of experience, but he praised my skill.”

Jack looked at the trail going into the dark. It couldn’t hurt to call on other powers, in case they never came out the other end. “May the life force hold us in the hollow of its hand. May we return with the sun and be born anew into the world,” he said, repeating the Bard’s words.

“I shall not return. My hope is Valhalla,” Thorgil said.

“And my hope is Heaven,” said Pega. Then they all joined hands, Thorgil in front, Pega next, and last of all, Jack.

“Like the Bugaboo, I need silence,” the shield maiden said. “I must remember our path.”

They went down into the blackness and, worse, the cold. Chill came up from the ground and down from the ceiling. The walls were so bone-numbing, they seemed to burn rather than freeze when you blundered into them. And everyone did that repeatedly. The going was much slower and harder with Thorgil leading.

Sometimes she had to stop and sense the air around her. Jack didn’t know what she was looking for. Everything seemed exactly the same, but after a moment Thorgil would choose a direction and pull them on.

Jack began to grow sleepy. He stumbled. “Don’t lie down,” Thorgil said. “That’s how the frost giants trap their enemies.”

Frost giants, Jack thought. He remembered the Bard saying something about them.

“I can’t go on,” Pega moaned. “Leave me. I’ll die here.”

“It’s just what I’d expect from a thrall,” Thorgil said harshly. “Very well, die. It’s what creatures like you do best.”

“I’m not a thrall!” said Pega with sudden energy.

“Good. I feel we are passing close to Niflheim. It is the realm of the goddess Hel, and she has a particular liking for thralls. I wouldn’t tempt her with any talk of dying. Now be quiet. I need to think.”

They stumbled on. Jack, too, found it difficult to put one foot ahead of the other. They seemed to have been in the dark for hours. Suddenly, he lurched to the side and fell onto something soft.

Well, not soft exactly, but not as flint-hard as the ground. It made a nice bed.

“Get up,” Pega said in a panicky voice. She clawed at him, trying to catch his arm. Thorgil returned and helped her.

“I bumped into one of those some distance back and led you around it,” the shield maiden said. She didn’t explain. The three of them staggered on, and it seemed Thorgil was getting weak too. Her steps became slower and more unsteady.

“I see light,” said Jack.

“Not a moment too soon. Hurry,” said Thorgil.

Just before the bone-chilling cold lifted, but when the light was barely strong enough to make out the walls, they encountered another strange lump in the tunnel. It was a large, muscular creature covered with fur like a giant otter. Its feet were turned backward, trailing useless claws, and its hands stretched toward the light. But the kelpie had frozen to death before it could escape.

“I suppose they were trying to invade Din Guardi,” Thorgil said.

When they came out to the sea, she collapsed on the ground. Jack noticed she was clutching the rune of protection and her face was drained of color. “You should rest,” he said, concerned.

“I’m ashamed of my weakness,” the shield maiden said. “We were passing close to Niflheim, and I thought if I died there, Odin might never find me.”

“Odin would always find you,” Jack said warmly. “You don’t belong in Niflheim. It would spit you out like a seed.” Thorgil smiled weakly.

They all rested, not saying the one thing that weighed on their minds, that time was slipping by and that the fire pit would soon be ready. Finally, heaving a sigh, Pega climbed to her feet. “I feel like I’ve been beaten all over with a club.”

“Me too,” admitted Thorgil. “There was more in that tunnel than cold.”

Jack did not reveal his theory. He’d been cold many times, but even the ice mountains of Jotunheim were not as terrible as that darkness. Whatever you called it—Niflheim or Hell—that tunnel was the realm of death, not the fate that awaited mortals who trusted in God. It was the utter absence of hope.

They hurried on. The tide dashed itself against the barrier around Din Guardi, and Jack felt queasy as he passed over it again. The country of the yarthkins greeted them with its warm, earthy smells. The air felt green, although, of course, it had no visible color. “I can make a torch now,” said Jack, looking around at driftwood and dried seaweed.

“I don’t think we’ll need it,” said Thorgil.

“You think they’ll come to us?” Jack said.

“If she sings.”

Jack had to fight back a moment of jealousy. His voice was good. It was more than good. It was better than the Bard’s had ever been, or Rune’s. It had pleased the yarthkins once they had arrived. But it was Pega who had called them.

She sang with the voice of the earth itself, with a power bards could only dream of. Jack knew then that he would never be the equal of her. He struggled to rise above the bitterness that filled his soul.

“Sing, Pega,” he commanded her. “Give them the hymn the angel taught to Caedmon.”

She turned toward the warm darkness of a yarthkin tunnel and called, “Erce, Erce, Erce” with her arms outstretched. “Come, oh, come,” she begged, and then she sang. First it was “Caedmon’s Hymn”, followed by a Yule song, “The Holly and the Ivy”. The next offering was “The Wife of Usher’s Well”, about a woman who called her sons home, not realizing they had perished under the sea. And the sons did return in the middle of the night, covered with seaweed and clam shells.

Jack thought that ballad might be unwise so near to the Hall of Wraiths. He was happier when she changed to a nursery rhyme. But really, it didn’t matter what Pega sang. All of it was beautiful.

In the distance Jack heard a whispering and a twittering. The darkness in the throat of the tunnel thickened. Something oozed from the walls and fell to the ground with a heavy plop. The hair on Jack’s arms stood up. He grasped his staff and placed himself between Pega and the advancing horde. Thorgil joined him.

Along the floor of the tunnel—and the sides and the ceiling—clustered knots of hair as pale as summer wheat. Long, earth brown fingers pulled them along. Bright, black eyes observed the children with a frightening intensity. Thorgil held her knife in her left hand. Jack had no doubt she could emulate Olaf, if attacked, right down to the kicking and headbutting. “Don’t do anything,” he whispered. “I think they’re friendly.”

“They’re landvættir,” she murmured. “It is always dangerous to draw their attention. Olaf used to remove the dragon head from the prow of his ship when he came to shore, to keep from offending them.”

“I don’t remember that,” said Jack, keeping his eyes on the steadily advancing mass of little haystacks.

“You weren’t paying attention. It’s fine to display the dragon head at sea, but the landvættir consider it a challenge. By Thor and Odin! Stop touching me!” By now the haystacks had reached Jack and Thorgil, and the pressure of their bodies brought forgotten dreams to the surface. They were the ones Jack tried to forget the moment he woke up, of sinking into mud or being swallowed by a giant snake.

“I’m not your enemy!” cried Thorgil, hurling the knife away. The ring of yarthkins opened out, and Jack breathed more easily. Pega stopped singing. Her face was chalk white.

One of the creatures stood apart from the mass. Jack assumed it was the same one he’d spoken to before and bowed politely. “Thank you for coming,” he said.

How didst thou find Din Guardi, children of earth? the creature said.

“Thoroughly nasty,” replied Jack.

And thy people? How were they?

“They weren’t even there,” Jack said. “My da and the Bard are at St. Filian’s Monastery. So is Brother Aiden. And now our friends are in danger.”

“Please, please help us,” cried Pega, breaking in. “King Yffi is going to kill the hobgoblins. Please—you offered us a boon before. We’re asking for it now. Save them! Save our friends! Destroy their enemies!”

“Be careful what you ask for,” murmured Thorgil.

Shield maiden, said the yarthkin, turning toward the girl. All of his followers did the same with a rustling and a twittering. Thy mother honored us. We do not forget.

“My—my mother?” gasped Thorgil. Jack knew she hardly had known her mother and had been ashamed of her because she was a thrall.

Thy mother asked us to watch over thee. She does so still.

“How can that be? She’s dead! I saw them cut her throat,” cried Thorgil.

We will help thee, children of earth, said the yarthkin, ignoring her outburst. The whole group began to move forward, out of the tunnel and into the muted light of late afternoon. Jack, Pega, and Thorgil were forced to go ahead of them. The thought of being overwhelmed by the little haystacks—of being crept on by them—was more than anyone could stand.

The sea clashed against the invisible barrier. The clouds lowered as though they, too, were trying to break through. Jack and his companions passed over, with Jack being swept by a familiar sensation of dizziness. They turned to look.

The yarthkins were halted at the border.

“Well, that was a waste of time,” said Thorgil.

Pega ran back. “What do we have to do? How can we break the spell that keeps the old gods out?”

Spell? said the head yarthkin. There is no spell.

“We were told about it,” said Jack. “The Man in the Moon did something bad. I don’t know what it was, but he was exiled to the moon, and the rest of you were forbidden to enter his fortress.”

The Man in the Moon wished to rule the green world, said the yarthkin in his whispery, twittering voice. He would have slain all to gain power, and to this end, he made an ally of Unlife. It was we who exiled him. But we have not been able to undo his harm. It is Unlife that keeps us out.

“I don’t know how to help you,” Jack cried. “The Bard might, but I can’t get to him.”

Thou hast the means, said the yarthkin, and his thousands upon thousands of followers rustled their agreement. Thy staff drew fire from the heart of Jotunheim. It is a branch of the Great Tree.

“Yggdrassil?” Jack was bewildered. He knew his staff was more than a mere piece of wood, but this? How could he have owned such a thing of power and not known it? And why hadn’t the Bard told him?

Lay thy staff across the ring of Unlife that we may pass over.

Jack paused for a moment. He had a feeling he wasn’t going to like what was going to happen, and he wanted to keep the talisman he’d unwittingly brought from Jotunheim. It was black as coal but hard as flint. He hadn’t used it much, not nearly enough. He didn’t really understand it, although once he’d called up an earthquake with it.

“Jack. Remember the hobgoblins,” said Pega.

The boy shook himself. Of course. Even now, King Yffi’s men might be dragging the Bugaboo and the Nemesis to the fire. He raised the staff and felt the familiar thrum of life within it. Then he laid it across the barrier.