Authors: Jude Fisher
The explosion of energy she received from the granite took her by surprise. She had been used, from her earliest years, to experiencing a certain rapture from the rock as she climbed, a certain connection with its surfaces, with its crystals and minerals, its smooth planes and its rough textures, but she had always considered this phenomenon to be some outward expression of her delight in the freedom her upward movement gave her, as if the life-force inside her was too great to be contained by mere skin and simply spilled out into whatever she came into contact with. Now, however, she knew it to be more than this. Whatever the seither had done to her, or whatever she had done to the seither, in that strange, powerful moment of gift and acceptance, had in some way involved a third force, something which had entered the moment from another place, beyond Rockfall, beyond the isles entirely.
Now she felt it again, this time as a constant presence which flowed into the muscles of her arms and thighs and made the usually steep and taxing climb seem a far less challenging prospect. Every time she reached up for a hold and curled her fingertips over the edge it was as if the rock flowed out to meet her and fused for a crucial second with her skin. Every time she poked a toe into a crack or balanced on a tiny incut, it seemed that the granite swarmed outwards, cupping her foot, ensuring that she didn’t slip. It was like dancing – a slow, sensual combination of moves as elegant and formal as a courtly reel, something at which Katla had never excelled because it bored her so much. By the time she reached the summit and wrapped her hand around the final hold there – a huge, frictive lip that curled out and up into the bizarre shape of a rabbit’s head – she could feel the blood beating gently but insistently through every inch of her body. Her head sang, her heart swelled. Sitting on soft pillows of sea-pink with the sun on her face, the tang of the salt-breeze in her nostrils and her feet dangling over the edge, she felt more alive than she had ever felt before.
For a few seconds she was in bliss; then the memory of the argument with her mother came flooding back to eclipse everything else like a black cloud across the sun.
Damn her, Katla thought. She unstrapped the bow and quiver, laid them down beside her on the spiky turf and kicked her heels hard against the rockface. Damn them all. The injustice of Bera’s revelation made her face flame. It was not that she was ashamed of her liaison with the mummers’ leader – far from it, in fact: when she examined the memory of that night and morning, as she did from time to time, taking it out as she might a keepsake cord, knotted with faded flowers and trinkets, all she felt was a terrible sadness at the loss of such a vital man, that she would never again have the opportunity to repeat that thrilling, forbidden coition – but that it was no one else’s business and she hated that they would all tattle about her and think themselves better for keeping their legs closed and their minds set on a good marriage. It would be hard to return to the steading. She considered her options. They were few and far between: she could take a faering, hope the weather stayed fair and row the twenty miles of sea between here and Black Isle. But Black Isle was poor and she did not know what work or shelter she might find there: its folk had enough difficulty fending for themselves at the best of times, and were unlikely to welcome an outcomer, especially the daughter of the Master of Rockfall, who had seduced all their men away on his wild-goose chase. She could row north into the choppier waters past the Old Man and on to Fostrey; but it was a more hazardous crossing and the place was largely deserted. She could stay on Rockfall and throw herself on the mercy of Old Ma Hallasen, for example. She had her bow and her arrow: she could bring in rabbits for the pair of them as part of the bargain. But the idea of kipping down with the mad woman’s goats and her brace of odd cats was hardly attractive. The thought of returning to the steading, however, was worse by far.
Pride: she recognised it in herself and knew it as a failing, drove her to say things she did not entirely intend. But it could also be an attribute which drove her harder than those around her, and as such an advantage and a blessing. Even so, it was difficult to swallow; it sat hard and round in the throat and kept her spine rigid and her head up.
And it was then that she spotted the ship.
It came into view from her right, far out on the ocean, where it had just cleared the long, tapering line of jagged black cliffs which guarded Rockfall’s eastern shores. It was a tiny silhouette at this distance, but even so, she could make out its clean lines and single dark, square sail. Her heart leapt up into her mouth. He had come back for her – of course he had, when he had realised Fent’s cruel trick. Or they had met with ice which was after all too impenetrable at this time of year and had decided to wait till spring to relaunch the expedition . . .
She stood up and shaded her eyes, squinted into the bright sunlight. Should she run down to the harbour to greet them, or wave them in from up here on the Hound’s Tooth? Somehow it seemed fitting that she should do the latter, waving madly from the same spot, give or take a few yards, where her beloved twin had left her bound and gagged.
So she sat and waited for the vessel’s approach, grinning from ear to ear. She would get the chance to see the legendary Sanctuary after all. It was like a miracle, as if the voice she had heard in the rock, as if its presence and its force were watching over her with absolute beneficence. She could not help but grin from ear to ear.
Moments later, the ship tacked sideways to catch the wind and she saw the second sail, smaller, running out to a boom. Her hands flew up to her face. Not the
Long Serpent
, then; and possibly not an Eyran ship at all. She stared and stared, unable to believe what was coming ever more clearly into view.
At once, she was on her feet and running, yelling at the top of her voice, though there was no one for a mile or more to hear her. Down below, at the steading and around the harbour, women went about their tasks and their gossip without the slightest suspicion that, by the time the sun had set on Rockfall this night, the course of their lives would be changed forever.
Twenty-eight
Seafarers
Mam ran a hand down the length of Persoa’s smooth back and sighed. Her mind was a delightful, rare blank: this was the closest she came to contentment and restfulness. That evening, just as the sun’s light dipped, they had beached the ship on a wide sandy shore of the island known only as ‘Far Sey’, made a fire and cooked their first hot meal in several days. After half a keg of stallion’s piss, the boiled mutton and wild leeks had been almost palatable: and most of the crew had made their way through a second keg, which had given her and the eldianna sufficient opportunity to erect a makeshift tent out of the spare sail and a framework of branches to keep prying eyes at bay. It had been four days since they had touched one another: shipboard life was hardly conducive to sexual liaisons for any but the most exhibitionist or intoxicated, and Mam had had an urgent need to feel his hands upon her. Now, by the flickering light of three lichen wicks floating in a bowl of seal-oil, she was examining his remarkable tattoo, tracing the lines with surprisingly gentle fingertips for a woman of such massive and ferocious appearance. On his long, lean, dark back, the intricate whorls and curlicues of his tribal markings exploded into an extraordinary riot of colours and shapes. The first time she had seen Persoa naked she had nearly fallen down in amazement: northern sailors sometimes came home from exotic climes with tattoos acquired while they were drunk and disabled in some seedy dockside dive, the generous gift of their so-called friends, and were usually either obscene or misspelt, often both; some made their own simple inked designs when bored at sea; but she had never in all her life seen anything remotely like the hillman’s markings. Mythical creatures and places wrapped his entire torso, front and back, like one of the tapestries in the King’s great hall. Personally, she had little interest in art or, even less, in artists (a more useless collection of self-involved, egotistical and spineless folk she could not even bear to imagine); and no time for those ridiculous tales of gods and goddesses, fabulous beasts and bizarre magics which so seemed to fascinate the rest of the population, both north and south; but even she had to admit that Persoa’s tattoo was one of the wonders of Elda.
She had forgotten its mysteries while they had been apart – or perhaps had pushed them away into the recesses of her memory for the sake of ease of mind – and then had been too enraptured by other functions of his anatomy to spend much time in examining it while they were in Halbo, but now, sated and curious at last, and with the fitful light thrown by the improvised candles across his skin, she found herself fascinated once again. Across the wide planes of his back the Farem Hills gave way to the classic conical mountains of the southern range, with their fans of volcanic ash and smoking fumaroles. Above them, dark clouds floated like an omen, punctuated by flashes of lightning and downpours of rain and golden hail, while down below, stretching across Persoa’s left flank and onto his belly, the scene of Falla’s flight from some unseen pursuer played itself out in gorgeous detail. She was about to roll the hillman over, when something caught her eye: the Red Peak looked different. She peered closer. The great mountain appeared to have split apart in some way, exhibiting a flaming crimson interior. He must have had the design touched up recently.
‘Nice work,’ she said softly. ‘Forent or Cera?’
For a moment there was no reply, then Persoa said dreamily, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Your tattoo, my wildman; your tattoo. Did you get the new work done in Cera or Forent?’
Persoa rolled onto an elbow and turned to face her, his expression bemused. Mam found herself confronted by the sight of his dark golden chest and a belly licked by flame; and then became thoroughly distracted by the sight of his thick, velvety cock twitching back to life. With a firm hand she pressed him back onto his front and held him down with consummate ease. The hillman turned his face to her over one shoulder, and the candlelight reflected in depths of his black eyes.
‘I am, as ever, all yours to do with what you will, my kitten.’
No one sane would ever think of calling Mam ‘my kitten’. Uncle Garstan had once tried to call her ‘my little cat’ while bending her over a haybale in the byre and fumbling with her smallclothes; and as if to bear out this nomenclature, she had twisted in his grip like a feral beast and scratched his face as hard as she could. He’d not had the opportunity to repeat this exercise: she’d kneed him in the groin, stolen his knife and a small pouch of silver and left his farm for good. But when Persoa spoke to her thus, it made her want to purr.
‘You’ve had your tattoo changed,’ she said matter-of-factly, trying to focus that fact, rather than the other entrancing thing she had seen. ‘The Red Peak is erupting.’
Persoa’s face was a picture in itself; and not just for the swirls of dark ink. ‘Erupting?’
‘There’s flames and smoke coming from it, and—’ She picked up the candle and held it closer to his buttocks. Two or three small drops of hot oil slipped lazily over the lip of the dish. Persoa yelped and bucked, but Mam was not to be shifted from her purpose. ‘And here,’ she said, tracing the track of hair that ran down between the two big muscles, ‘there’s something else.’ Leaning in, she spread his cheeks with the powerful fingers of her other hand and the hillman wriggled uncomfortably. ‘Hold still,’ she admonished him, ‘I’m not going to do anything unnatural to you.’ She paused, grinning. ‘Unless, that is, you wish it.’
Another drop of seal-oil spilled onto him and ran down into the crack.
‘I thank, you: no.’
‘Well, see here – ah, you can’t: well, let me tell you what I see. The Red Peak has split apart near the roots of the mountain and something has half-emerged from it – a figure, it might be, though it’s hard to tell in this light. Or in this position.’
‘A figure?’
‘All black and spiky it is – like a goblin or a sprite.’
Now Persoa mustered his not inconsiderable strength and, throwing off the mercenary leader, leapt away into the corner of the tent, his face contorted with horror. The soapstone dish went flying, hot oil flaming out across the dark space between them, and a line of fire immediately ran up the edge of the sailcloth. Seconds later, it had taken hold and their shelter was well and truly alight, but even so, the eldianna remained where he was, clutching his knees to his chest and moaning over and over, ‘The Warlord, the Madman, the Warlord, the Madman; Lady help us all . . .’
Mam stood up and with her bare hands ripped the burning sailcloth from its makeshift frame and hurled it away from them. It roared through the night air like a comet, attracting the attention of the rest of the crew.
‘Gods blind me,’ Joz Bearhand muttered, looking up from his throw with the sheep’s bones to take in this bizarre tableau. He had never seen his leader unclothed before; and had never had the least wish to do so, and now he knew why. If truth be told, he liked his women well-formed, but not on such a scale. He found himself wondering what in the world she did with them to keep them out of her way in a fight and then remembered seeing the yards of stiff linen amongst her things he’d taken all this time for bandages. And bandages they were, in their way, though not for your regular sort of wound.
‘Take a look at the pair on that,’ Doc breathed in awe. ‘Have you ever seen such monstrous— Ow!’
‘Have some respect,’ Joz chided him. ‘If Mam knows you’ve been gawping at her tits, she’ll be wearing your bollocks on a string round her neck before you can say “Feya’s sweet box”.’
After that, they all shut up.
Oddly, no one said a word about the episode for the rest of the night; nor indeed when they set sail again the next morning; and no one dared ask why the eldianna went about his tasks with the staring eyes of a man in shock, or why the tent had gone up in flames in the first place. As one of the younger Halbo sell-swords confided to Erno: ‘She’s a strong woman, Mam. The last time I saw a man rendered such a gibbering wreck was after he took on Three-handed Ketya and her sisters at the Sailors’ Relief. Poor man never walked the same again.’