Angels and Exiles (17 page)

Each wall was marked with a dozen eye-slits. Around the curve of the shaft, Dagr saw a narrow opening leading into further darkness. He felt his legs tremble and leaned against the wall, acutely conscious of the eye-slit closest to his right shoulder. He wanted to let himself sink to the floor, but the stone would be so cold, and he might not ever find the energy to stand up. . . . It came to him that this was the limit of his flight, that he would lack the courage to burrow any further into the frozen Hold, that he would die here, surrounded by the bones of ancestors in the walls, and that he might never be found, that he would never see the sun again. He whined deep in his throat, a babyish sound. The dead all around him were listening, their souls tethered to the jumble of their bones, peering out through the eye-slits. He had to go back, face the risks of the Hold; anything was preferable to this lonely death. But he couldn’t stand the thought of turning his back on the dead. He pushed himself against the wall, sliding to a blank section; here at least there were no bones in the wall.

There were stories, of course, of dead who had been buried without any opening to the outside world. Wicked men, those who deserved an eternity of torment, were sealed into a compartment devoid of an eye-slit, their bones drowned in mortar, to remain forever deaf and blind. . . . Dagr thought he could sense someone dead behind him; not just bones but an entire body, that of Sartog himself, his flesh too unclean to consume, whole and untouched in its sheath of stone. A shiver ran down his back like claws stroking his ribs, and with a cry of terror he wrenched himself from the wall.

He turned around and of course saw nothing but plain wall, the glimmers of frost scuffed away where he had rested his shoulders. His panting breath made a cloud before his face; his lungs hurt from the cold and he coughed, salty phlegm filling his mouth until he made himself swallow it down. The lamp was dimming further; Dagr grabbed the handle and turned it vigorously. After two turns, there was a
snap
, and suddenly the crank turned without any resistance.

Against all logic, the light from the lamp immediately flickered and reddened. Dagr was about to be caught in the outer regions without light of any sort.
You must shut off the light
, came a thought in his mind.
Shut it off and conserve what power is left for when you really need it. Shut it off now, climb up the stairs
.

He couldn’t make himself do it; already it was too late, as darkness washed over him, drowning out the red-black ember of the lamp. Dark light, a black glory, unshining from the centre of the room, as if it came from the great shaft. Within the darkness a winged shape moved. It turned its face to him. A smell was filling his nostrils, like the memory of flames, and the air was almost painfully warm.

Her voice came, louder than before, closer, as if she merely spoke from the other side of a wall. “It is so hard to reach you, beloved” she said, every word muffled yet trailed by sharp echoes, the scuttling of insects on dead leaves. “Can you not hear me? We wait for you, yet you have not opened the gate; you have not cast your voice across the abyss to our ears; you have not welcomed us. Do not be afraid, beloved; embrace me and let us come to you.”

She was naked, the black wings opened at her sides, revealing a body hairless, epicene, a clean triangle of flesh at her crotch, her nipples spots of black on black on her boyish breasts. Gleams of starlight reflected in her eyes, cold points of whiteness it hurt him to glimpse. She did not stand, for her feet hung down loosely from her ankles; rather, she floated in the night, her every movement slow as dreams.

Dagr stood motionless and mute before the apparition as she extended a beseeching hand toward him. Her gaze wasn’t aimed precisely at him, as if her black eyes were blind. For ten or twenty frenzied heartbeats she hung in the void before him, then the darkness retreated like the tide and vanished. Dagr’s lamp was shining a pale yellow in his gloved hands. The air of the room was biting cold, but all traces of frost on the walls had gone. And the shaft turned, imperceptibly. From far below his feet came a deep clanging and creaking, the sound unoiled door hinges shaped by a titan would make. In the light of his lamp, deep within the holes drilled at the ends of the grooves, something glowed, like glass, like eyes.

Dagr moved his thumb on the switch, and flicked off the lamp. Then he turned, in a frenzy of panic, and ran up the stairs, moaning and gasping. Once his feet had left the steps, he fled blindly along the corridor, slamming into the right-hand wall and then the left, his arms extended before him. The air reached fingers of chill into his throat and gouged it raw.

He scraped the heel of his left hand on a doorjamb, tearing a hole in the glove, then he was inside a small room. There was a wall in front of him, with an opening to his right, which he took. At the edge of the opening, just above his head, a pair of tiny lights, narrow-set eyes, glowed a steady red. He found himself in a long corridor, which he thought he might even recognize; but he had dropped the broken lamp somewhere and the sparse constellations on the ceiling shed no illumination. No need; his hearing had gone so acute he sensed the walls and ceiling about him. He ran flawlessly now, avoiding all obstacles, turning a quarter-turn right, then left, following the corridor. His feet flew on the floor, the scuffing of his boots loud in the darkness. It would alert anyone, but he would rather be found and killed than remain alone any longer. . . .

Then he collided at full speed with a wooden door, bloodying his nose and setting off explosions of false light in his eyes. When he had recovered from the impact, he reached out cautiously, found a handle which yielded to his touch. Beyond the door was heat and light, the noise of people moving about. Dagr staggered a few yards farther down the corridor, entered the hunters’ hall through a disused curtained doorway.

Three men were lounging in the hall, the living counterparts of the three stick figures painted on the walls in the outer Hold. One of them was sunk in his cups, another appeared intent on joining him. Neither paid more than cursory attention to Dagr. Dagr knew the third man, Björnkarl, who had been kind to him in the past. The hunter was so again this time, rising to his feet and helping the youth lie down on one of the couches, fetching water and a cloth to clean up his bloody nose.

“What the hell have you been playing at, kid?” the hunter asked, his tone both annoyed and concerned. Dagr shook his head and remained silent.

Björnkarl looked at the back of Dagr’s head, then dabbed at it with his cloth. Dagr sensed a hard crust between the cloth and his scalp, that did not yield no matter how much water was applied. After a minute, the hunter gave up on his ministrations.

“What were you doing in that corridor?” he asked. “Did someone take you there, or were you stupid enough to go by yourself? . . . All right, you don’t have to say anything. Here’s some advice: go see the priest. Him you’ll talk to, if you have any sense. I’ll take you there myself. No way I can shelter a bastard in the hunters’ hall, not even if you were mine.”

Dagr allowed the hunter to pull him to his feet and drag him along. They took a circuitous route and avoided meeting anyone else, twice by dint of a sudden stop before an intersection. The hunter matched Dagr’s silence the whole time. Finally they stood at a narrow door, a secondary access to the chapel. Björnkarl put his hand on Dagr’s shoulder and whispered.

“I’m sorry for what happened. I can understand you’re upset. But you should try to mend things with your father. You’re the hetman’s flesh; it counts for more than you realize.”

Then he was gone, and Dagr opened the door into the chapel. The room was bathed in the glow of the wall panels, the pews casting multiple soft shadows. Bunches of fir twigs were tied to the pillars that rose toward the ceiling. No one was there, apart from the priest himself.

Pater Kolgrim was on his knees, praying. Again and again he bent at the waist to kiss the base of the tree on which the Lord hung, muttering litanies. Dagr stepped forward, hesitant. The priest seemed to ignore Dagr, until he abruptly stopped his prayers and turned at the waist, still kneeling, to regard him. His expression was bleak, his eyes haunted.

“Have you come to reproach me?” he asked.

Bewildered, Dagr answered: “Excuse me, Pater. I didn’t mean to bother you.”

“No, of course you didn’t. Then why have you come?”

Dagr stammered, unable to find the words to explain his situation. “I wanted to . . . to know something,” he said.

Pater Kolgrim rose to his feet and started to take off his stole, then put it slowly back on. “You have a question? Then ask it.”

Dagr struggled with an opening. “What does it mean . . . when you see a woman . . . like in dreams?”

Pater Kolgrim uttered a short bark of laughter. “Lust. Merely lust. Normal for a boy your age. You must pray for the Lord to keep your thoughts pure, and—”

“No. A woman with wings. She had wings.”

The priest’s mouth twisted as if in disgust.

“It means you lie,” he said. “No one sees angels in their dreams. The Lord doesn’t send his messengers to mankind anymore.”

“But she spoke to me. She said—”

“Enough!” the priest shouted. “I don’t want to hear your stories, boy!” One hand clutched at the end of his stole, twisting it into a rope. “Get out! I was not responsible, do you hear? I told them it was wicked, but no one ever listens to me, do they? They want to be wedded, and they want a feast, and if no meat is fresh enough . . .”

Dagr remained motionless, struggling to accept the truth that was dawning on him. The priest, his voice barely recovered, shouted at him once more to leave.

“You have no right to blame me,” he croaked. “It was for your sake he was taken. He was below the lawful age for adjudgement, but you, you’re the son of the hetman.
Your
meat they didn’t dare take.”

Pater Kolgrim fell back onto his knees before the tree and muttered hoarse entreaties. Above him, the Lord with his arms outstretched gazed down with a blank eye at the sufferings of the world.

Dagr took a step back. He felt his heart thudding in his belly, not his chest, and liquid cold running down his entrails. He recalled the wedding banquet; the aroma of roasted meat filled his nostrils, but this time his mouth was filled with ashes. He smelled then the burning scent that accompanied the dark woman dancing in the gap within the heart of the candle flame, surrounded by the prismatic glories of light born from the mask’s visor.

His hand went up to the cut at his temple where the loose wire from the mask had scratched his flesh like a thorn. Resolve bloomed. He took two long strides, knelt to the side of Pater Kolgrim, and twisted the key loose from its metal loop at the priest’s belt. The man did not react, lost in his misery. When Dagr left the chapel, he could still hear the priest moaning for forgiveness. There was a faint roaring in his ears, but the convulsions of vomiting he expected did not materialize. Something within him was held in abeyance, waiting for revelation.

The padlock yielded to the key; Dagr let it fall to the floor, pushed the door and entered the chamber. From the entrance he could see the glow from the living masks at the end of the room. Still, he summoned light by brushing his fingers against a pad as Pater Kolgrim had done before; lamps awoke on the ceiling.

Dagr made his way to the far end of the room. He knew which mask he had worn before; yet he first reached for one of the lit ones, Patrekr’s mask, applied it to his face. It was very light, surprisingly flexible, like thin tanned skin. The world looked exactly the same through the faceplate, the glow of the lamps unaltered, save for the oval of green radiance framing his sight.

He laid Patrekr’s mask back in its place. His hands went to the other mask, the mask of an unnamed and forgotten ancestor. A mask that had itself died and was therefore much greater than a live mask, in the same way that the dead were vastly more potent than the living. Once again, as he put it on, the loose wire scratched his temple, at an angle to the previous cut; Dagr felt it slicing the flesh, breaking the narrow scab with a sound more imagined than real, and continuing on its way. The finger he brought to his head he withdrew dotted with blood and put in his mouth.

Wearing this mask, his face was his own; it was his sight that was changed. Overlaid upon it was the sight of the unnamed ancestor. Through the visor the room altered, the shelves faded, and shadows pulsed as if something ungainly struggled to come into being in the corners. Dagr walked back to the door; he lifted his hand to the pad—stark in his sight, that square upon the wall, so real—and dismissed the lights. In the darkness, the slit of the opening he had left in the doorway was fringed with glories of pure colour.

He might stride through the corridors of the Hold now; but would he see anything more through the mask than he had before? Would it show him a way to safety? A magic path through the snow and ice of the outside to a refuge? Never. Dagr realized he was asking himself the wrong questions. Safety could no longer be his concern; nor did he need atonement, for he had committed no sin. What he must find was revenge. To answer the capture of stones with a larger one; to strike back, in Griss’s memory. His eyes burned but would not shed any tears.