Angels and Exiles (16 page)

And yet something in him is woken to fury. He deserves better than this. Who do they think he is? The thought roars through his head like wind whistling through a breach in an outer wall. He knows the answer, of course: he is only Dagr, no matter the mask of the ancestor he wears. . . . Something odd strikes him then, as he beholds the faces all in a row up the table: though the masks shed a glow, the faces behind the visors are perfectly ordinary. The lineaments of the ancestors Patrekr, Avarr-Ram, Galinn, are absent from the boys’ faces.

The dish lies still before Dagr’s own plate, steaming in the cool air, little hills of rice scattered across its surface. A servant hovers near Dagr’s elbow. Dagr grabs the dish and hands it to the servant. Pater Kolgrim won’t be the only one to disdain the food. At least there is drink: a filled mug of beer has been set before him. Dagr brings the mug to his lips and takes a huge slug. The alcohol makes his throat tighten at first, then ignites something at the core of his body. As the assembled host begins to eat, amidst cheers and wishes for health, Dagr quaffs more of the beer. Soon the mug is empty and he holds it out for refilling.

The burn intensifies as Dagr drinks on; when he feels pressure in his belly, he relieves it with a long belch. His half-cousins look at him, scandalized. They haven’t more than moistened their lips at their own mugs. Stupid little boys.

Dagr is breathing fast, and the rainbows around the light sources spin when he turns his head. There is a candle shining close to his face, the flame flickering and dancing, red green blue glories dancing fourfold around it. . . .

A hole opens in the heart of the candle flame, a tiny dot of blackness that stretches like a wound in the skin. A tiny, tiny woman moves within the hole, and her eyes are pits of blackness in her black face. Dagr feels himself breathing, floating in the air, rainbows crowding at the edge of his vision while his eyes focus on the spot of darkness.

A wind is blowing the woman’s black hair about. Her mouth opens and he hears her voice, a whisper from the other end of a tunnel ten leagues long.

“Do not be afraid,” she says. “I have passed through the sun, and this is why I am black.”

He can smell her now, a smell of burning, as if the very air were aflame. She turns, she turns to face him fully, and he realizes she has wings, as black as the rest of her.

“Do not be afraid,” she repeats, “but love me with all your heart. I have put the veil of abysses from my face. Open the gate to me, in the name of the great void.”

Dagr fights to tear himself away from the vision; he reaches out a hand and closes finger and thumb on the candle flame. His ungloved fingertips are stung by the heat; he brings his hand back reflexively, cradles it in the pit of his stomach. The black hole has closed with the dying of the flame; only a ribbon of smoke coils toward the everburning ceiling lights. Dagr thinks to smell the tang of his own roasted flesh in it.

His behaviour had attracted attention; Oddr was peering at him with a frown, and even sweet Lyuvina of the firm breasts had directed her gaze to Dagr.

As if in answer to the pressure of their sight, he rose to his feet, held up his mug. “I haven’t had a chance to speak yet,” he said in an uncertain voice. “To wish my brother good fortune, and happiness in his marriage, and many sons . . . all the things I’ll never see the colour of, in short!”

Osfrid’s face had shown a tolerant smile at the beginning of Dagr’s outburst; with the last sentence his mouth grew tight-lipped. Dagr felt chastised, reproached beyond anything his father the hetman could mete out. And yet he went on.

“It’s nothing against you, brother. You’re beyond blame, with your blue eyes, and your spotless clothes with all their buttons. I can’t blame our father for having you, or Ormolf, or Oddr. It’s just that it’s hell being a bastard, you know?”

He turned to the rest of the hall, waving his mug around. The sloshing of liquid within the thin cylinder made him thirsty, and he downed another swig of ale. His throat glowed with the alcohol and kindled his voice even louder.

“You don’t know what it’s like, none of you know! You’re all jealous of me ’cause I’m here at the head table, with an ancestor’s mask; what the fuck good is it when you don’t even know who you’re supposed to be? I’m just a god-damned afterthought, that’s what I am to you all. You’ll load the scales against me at my adjudgement, you won’t give me an even chance ’cause you all wish you could be me and you all hate me. . . .”

“That’s enough, boy.” The hetman’s voice was dripping with contempt.

“That’s all I ever hear from you, old man,” Dagr raved on, his heart breaking, “can’t even look at me with a smile, can you?”

Hradulf rose to his feet, his face dark with fury; but Pater Kolgrim was at Dagr’s side, gently wrestling the mug from his hand and leading him away.

“The ancestors have eaten and drunk amongst us,” the priest said loudly, “they have honoured us with their presence! Now they must return to their long sleep. Come, revered ancestors, come with me.”

Impelled by the priest’s urgings, the six other youths rose and followed him back out the door, along the corridor, and to the chamber of masks. None of them went willingly; Ormolf most of all, whose eyes were wide with disbelief at this turn of events.

In the secluded room, Pater Kolgrim removed Dagr’s mask and placed it back in its former spot. The moment this was done Dagr’s drunkenness evaporated; still dizzy, he leaned against the wall and watched the priest removing the masks of the others, each time thanking the ancestor by name before putting the mask back. Now Dagr saw the ancestor’s faces in the glow from the masks, saw them vanish into nothingness as the visor was pulled away from living flesh, until all that was left were six youths, their emotions ranging from disappointment to fury.

Ormolf made an abortive move toward Dagr; Pater Kolgrim interposed himself. “We’re all overwrought,” he said. “Some of us have had too much to drink, and they’re not used to alcohol. The Lord frowns on His children fighting over trifles, you know. Much better if you all returned to the feast, wouldn’t it? There will be much more entertainment to come. Of course, those who are too tired should go rest instead.”

Ormolf sneered at the words, but eventually turned away and strode through the door, along with the others. Dagr remained alone with the priest, who looked at him with a sad smile on his lips.

“I heard you, Pater,” mumbled Dagr before the priest could offer him any more solace. “I’m going to my pallet.”

Outside the chamber, he navigated the twisting passages swiftly, intent on reaching the tiny room he had claimed for his own in a seldom-frequented corner of the Hold. He needed peace and quiet, time to settle his nerves, to make sense of what had happened.

Just before reaching a juncture, he heard a scrape of metal against stone and came to a sudden halt. Footsteps, a measured tread. His stomach tightened to a painful knot. He no longer believed Ormolf had gone back to the wedding feast with the others.

Dagr turned on his heels and fled back. Someone was running behind him; one glimpse over his shoulder confirmed his worst fears.

Ormolf ran faster than he could; very soon Dagr heard the youth’s breath almost in his ears. He panicked, turned left instead of right, became lost as he ran into corridors less and less lit, into near darkness. Eventually, Dagr saw a door in the side wall. He opened it, ran through, hoping to close it behind him—but Ormolf had already rushed in. Dagr fled a few steps onward, then stopped in dismay.

The room was a dead end. A tight row of pillars closed off one side, and the light came from a lone eternal lamp set in the facing wall, its sizzling arc of radiance weaving slowly behind the glass dome. Blades of metal half-immersed in rectangular tanks of fluid gleamed in the light.

The door slammed shut. Dagr turned to face Ormolf, holding his hands out at his sides, palms open. He began to speak, apologies and entreaties mixed, as Ormolf stepped forward slowly, a leer on his face. Dagr was on the point of begging when Ormolf finally hit him. Ormolf’s foot caught Dagr in the stomach; Dagr crashed to the ground, bent double.

“Little fuck,” said Ormolf, “can’t even behave yourself at your brother’s wedding! You want to dishonour our family, is that it, little fuck? Is that it, eh?”

Each question came with another kick. Dagr cried out in pain, unable to keep silent. He tried to answer the questions, but of course this only excited Ormolf further. Soon Dagr made no more effort at answering and only took the rain of blows. He forced himself to breathe as the metal-shod heel of Ormolf’s boot slammed into his shoulders and back, his shins and knees, and finally his head, three massive impacts. At the last he felt a ringing filling his ears and screamed out with what little air was in his lungs.

Then there came a lull, a blessed space of quietness. No more blows came; his pain ebbed, and the torment in his chest vanished. His ears felt wadded with gum; he thought the final blow might have deafened him. Yet when, after an indefinite time, he unfolded himself a trifle, he heard his sleeve scrape against the flagstone well enough.

He opened his eyes, fighting against the urge to keep them squinted shut. The room was empty now, Ormolf nowhere to be seen. When he raised a hand and waved it, he saw its enormous shadow cast onto the tightly set pillars and dance about.

Dagr rolled himself onto his knees, wincing at the pain, though it was hardly the crippling agony he’d feared. He managed to stand up at his second attempt.

This had been by far the worst beating he’d ever received from Ormolf. And it was all too clear to him that it had been meant as a harbinger of things to come. By law, until a formal adjudgement had taken place, Dagr’s life was protected. But the law might be relaxed for the legitimate son of the hetman removing a weakling from the Hold prematurely. Had Ormolf killed Dagr in his rage, could there be any doubt that Hradulf would have protected his legitimate son? Next time, Ormolf might well decide to take the chance and render judgement on Dagr’s fitness by his own sole authority.

Dagr had to flee. Yet he could not leave the Hold; the Fimbulwinter reigned outside and would take his life far surer than Ormolf would. Hide, then. So much of the Hold was empty of human presence. Dagr went to the door on legs already firmer, gritted his teeth as he opened it, afraid to see Ormolf revealed on the other side. But the corridor beyond was empty, lit only by yellow and green flickers from above. Dagr crept down its length to a narrow opening in the left-hand wall that gave onto a dark passageway, which he followed until it doglegged. Already he felt concealed here, but this was hardly a place where he could stay. He reached into the pockets of his house coat, sorting through his meagre possessions, until his hand closed on the portable lamp he sought. Unlike the fixed lamps of the Hold, it did not burn endlessly. Instead, it was crank powered: turning the handle for a minute or two yielded up to half an hour of light.

The crank made a loud noise, so he only turned it once before flicking on the lamp. The amber beam pushed the darkness away in front of him. He used it to check the length of the passageway up ahead, then flicked off the lamp and strode forward cautiously.

The passageway gave onto a wider corridor, still sunk in darkness, though pinprick lights gleamed here and there, amber and red and one or two green, like counterfeit stars. Dagr chose the direction that most likely led into the depths of the Hold, away from its beating heart. The brief flashes of his lamp illuminated bundles and sheaves of cables snaking the length of the corridor above his head, stone walls broken by eye-slits on either side of him, with no other openings, no doors to a convenient room or closet where he could huddle and recuperate and plan his new furtive existence.

He went on, following the corridor, where now the lights grew fewer and fewer until they were all gone and he found himself in utter darkness. He shivered. The outer regions of the Hold were terribly cold. He had heard, in his youth, stories about people going to sleep in remote rooms and freezing to death. It felt now as if he’d always known that one day he would find himself in one of those stories. The darkness had swallowed him up; he kept his right hand on the wall, the skin of the glove rasping softly against the stone, interrupted every so often when it came to an eye-slit. He breathed through his open mouth, knowing his heat was rushing out with every breath, but every time he reminded himself of the fact and shut his mouth, his nose began to hurt from the cold of the air, and within a few seconds he would open his mouth again.

He counted his steps; every half-hundred, he flicked on his light and glanced around him, then shut it off. To any predator, he would be all too visible; but with any luck, he wasn’t hunted yet. Would Ormolf stalk him, intent on finishing the job he’d started? Not Ormolf, he told himself. Not yet, anyway. To take him into a quiet corner and savage him, yes. To hunt him down in the dark outer regions of the Hold—surely Ormolf wasn’t that far along.

At last Dagr came to a T junction. To his left lights blinked in constellations that grew thicker in the distance. The beam of his lamp showed stone walls splashed here and there with white paint, forming a crude arrow aimed at a trio of stick figures. The signpost of civilization. Dagr turned right, into darkness.

Presently the floor dropped under his foot: stairs descending. By the brief amber glow of his lamp, he saw there was no option to continue on the same level, since a massive grooved metal shaft filled the corridor.

He went down fifteen steps to a small landing, then ten more, then another landing. . . . The stairs corkscrewed down along the shaft. Two more landings and he reached the bottom. He flicked on his light: the stairs gave onto a wide square room that surrounded the shaft. Here the grooves were interrupted by uneven horizontal lips. At the end of some grooves, a round hole was bored into the metal, and deep within each hole, something like glass, like ice, glinted in the light. A metal collar sealed the openings that allowed the shaft passage at floor and ceiling. There was a finger-wide gap between the shaft and the collar, as if the shaft were intended to rotate.