Land of the Silver Dragon (18 page)

‘Until it came into the Dragon's hands,' I whispered. ‘And he reacted just as his great-grandfather had done.'

‘He did,' Thorfinn said heavily. ‘He fell deep under its enchantment, and it took him, helpless, on a terrible journey inside himself. So affected was he by what was revealed to him there that his mind was all but destroyed.'

He fell silent. Deeply shaken by the horror of what he had just said, I dared not speak.

After a moment, he resumed. ‘Had it not been for a chance meeting with a dark-eyed, laughing healer,' he said softly, ‘the Dragon would have torn himself apart.'

T
horfinn and I sat for some time, both of us deep in our thoughts. I guessed he was still lost in the Dragon's tale, perhaps grateful that this kinsman of his had had such a timely rescue from the powerful object that was slowly stealing his soul. I had heard of such things. Gurdyman, who enlightened me, left me in no doubt as to their danger.

Even while I was thinking about Thorfinn, something was batting at the edge of my mind, trying to attract my attention. I did as I've been taught in such situations, deliberately slowing my breathing, relaxing my body and stilling my thoughts. Quite soon, I understood.

I understood a lot; it was as if a mist had cleared, revealing the sun shining on a bright image. I maintained my silence for a little longer while I worked out how best to tell Thorfinn what I now believed I knew.

‘It seems to me,' I said quietly, ‘that the Dragon could not risk continued possession of his shining stone.' I sensed Thorfinn stiffen as his attention flew back to me, but he did not speak. ‘He knew that it was too dangerous an object; for him, anyway. He realized that his only hope was to abandon it.'

‘
Abandon
is the wrong word.' Thorfinn's tone was harsh. ‘He could never have done that, for the stone was far too important to him. It was,' he added heavily, ‘an heirloom, and it belonged to his line until the end of days.' He paused, as if about to pursue that thought, but evidently changed his mind. He shook his head, muttered something, then turned back to me. ‘But yes, you are right. He understood that it was too powerful for him, and he had no option but to leave it in the safe keeping of another. Not for ever,' he added urgently, as if I had protested, ‘but until such time as he should have a son, and that son would be ready to take possession of the stone. To try his own strength against it,' he murmured, his voice dropping to a whisper.

Until he had a son
, I repeated to myself. Yes, that would be the way of it. Already the stone had passed through the hands of four generations, and family tradition would no doubt insist that the Dragon's son had his turn.

‘The Dragon left it with the little healer, didn't he?' I said. I suppose I was guessing, but I felt the confidence that comes when you're right. ‘And ...' Something else occurred to me, and it was all I could do not to yell in triumph. ‘And the
long trading mission to familiar shores
that you spoke of was to somewhere in the fens, wasn't it?' He didn't answer, but I sensed an easing of tension in him, as if, for some reason, he was pleased I'd worked it out. ‘The healer lived somewhere near where I live, and she took the shining stone and hid it in a safe place. Now the Dragon's son must have grown to manhood, and he wants it, and so your people sent Einar to go and look for it, and he broke into the places where members of my family live and ... and ...'

I stopped, for my bright confidence had cracked and broken, and my clever theory fell in ruins at my feet. Two things about it deeply disturbed me: first, no matter how I tried, and bearing in mind that I knew from first-hand experience that Einar had a terrible temper and readily lashed out with his huge fists, I found all at once that I could no longer see him as the ruthless killer of Goda's mother-in-law and my aunt Alvela.

Was
this
the reason why I'd had to work so hard to remind myself he was a murderer? Because I'd been wrong about him, and deep down I knew it?

His people would not have sent him out to perpetrate such violence, no matter what the goal. I just couldn't believe it. It was always possible that they did not know he was a killer, but I couldn't really make myself believe that, either. They were clannish, here. Younger generations revered their honoured elder and did what he told them.

But
somebody
had come looking. The other shocking thing about my theory was that, whoever the searcher was, he had concentrated his hunt on the dwellings of my own kin. Which meant ...

Who was she?
I am the family's bard, the keeper of the traditions, the one whose job it is to memorize the long kinship lists, the family trees. Where, among all those people, was there a healer? Edild, of course, but the description of the young woman did not really fit her.

I spun round to Thorfinn. ‘How many years ago did this happen?' I demanded. ‘When did the Dragon leave his precious shining stone in the fens?'

Thorfinn looked at me steadily. ‘Some sixteen, seventeen years before Duke William arrived,' he said. His voice, I thought, was carefully neutral.

So that was 1049 or 1050. Definitely not Edild, then; she hadn't been born. Who were the healers in my Granny's generation? She was the bard, the storyteller, and I couldn't recall her ever having mentioned a healer. She'd had two elder sisters, but they hadn't had any particular talents beyond those that everyone needs to survive out in the fenland. What of my mother's kin? She had come from shepherding stock, and her family had worked a compact but thriving smallholding. She came from a long line of big, fair women just like her, but there could easily have been a small, dark one among them. Had this unknown woman been the healer summoned to tend the Dragon when he'd been so badly beaten? It was the best I could come up with. It fitted, since the dwelling places where the giant had searched were as closely attached to my mother's kin as to my father's: Goda, Elfritha and I were her daughters, and poor Alvela had been her sister-in-law.

I tried to think which of my mother's aunts had been a healer, and I thought I recalled her speaking of a woman who had been skilled with plants and the preparation of medicines. Ama? Aeda? Cross with myself, I could not bring it to mind.

Thorfinn was waiting. I drew a breath, and said, ‘I believe that the woman who healed the Dragon was an ancestor of mine, on my mother's side. While she tended him, he learned to care for her and to trust her, so that, when he made the momentous decision to part from his magic stone, he left it in her keeping. She hid it away in such a secure place that it has lain there ever since. Except now, the Dragon's son wants to claim his inheritance, and, on his behalf, Einar –' no, not Einar, I was sure of it – ‘
someone
has been to the fens to search for it.'

I was not entirely pleased with my account. I knew I was right in essence; it was just in the details that it threatened to fall apart.

Thorfinn studied me for a long moment. Then, nodding, he said, ‘You have made deductions, and leapt from what you know to what seem to you reasonable conclusions. You are right in some things, for it was indeed to the fenland that the Dragon travelled, and, as you surmise, there that he left his treasure in the hands of the woman who healed him.'

‘But was she ...?'
Was she my mother's aunt
? I wanted to ask.

Thorfinn, it seemed, wasn't going to tell me. ‘The stone has been hidden these many years,' he went on, ‘and now it is sought, most urgently.' He closed his eyes, as if suddenly weary. ‘Not, however, by the son of the Dragon; for, having grown up with the story of what the shining mirror almost did to his father, the son has, until now, been content to leave it where it lies.' Opening his eyes, he turned to me.

The look in his eyes made me shrink away.

‘The stone's existence is known of outside the Dragon's immediate kin,' he said. There was despair in his voice. ‘A feud has been waged, through three generations, between two siblings and their descendants. The Dragon's mother – Thorkel's granddaughter – had a younger brother, who was a lesser being than his sister in every quality save malice and spite, and who grew up resenting his sister to the point of loathing. Two generations later, his grandson believes it is his sacred mission to restore his branch of the family to what he sees as their rightful position, in ascendancy over the Dragon's line. To this end, he has embarked on a search for the stone, which we hope and pray with all our hearts will not succeed.'

I was shivering, and it wasn't from the cold. ‘Is he big, bearded and red-haired?' I whispered.

‘He is,' Thorfinn said solemnly. ‘His name is Skuli, and he is warped by evil.'

And
, I could have added,
he broke his way into our homes and killed my kinswomen
.

My triumph over having deduced correctly was short-lived. I remembered, far too graphically, what this man warped by evil had done to my kin.

Oh –
oh
– was he still there, casting his huge and threatening shadow over everyone I loved? Here was I, so far away, made impotent by distance; I might now know what he'd been looking for, but that was no help whatsoever to my family, because there was no way of telling them. He believed that they stood between him and what he so powerfully desired. The fact that they had no idea about either the stone or its whereabouts wasn't going to be any protection at all ...

I leapt up. I would have run to my pony and galloped away, except that Thorfinn grabbed a fold of my skirt and held me back.

‘Where are you going?' he asked.

‘
I'm going home!
' I cried. ‘They need me – I'm the only one who has any idea what this is about! I've got to go
home
!'

His hold tightened, and slowly he pulled me back to sit down beside him. ‘You are full of courage, little one,' he said, and I heard the very edge of amusement in his tone.

‘They're in danger,' I whispered. To my shame, I felt tears well up in my eyes.

What happened next was entirely unexpected: Thorfinn made a quiet sound, almost of distress, and, putting his great arms round me, drew me down against his mighty chest. It was the sort of all-embracing, enfolding hug that my father used to give me when I was a child and had fallen over – when, come to think of it, I was a young woman, secretly crying in the night because the man she loved was far away and she had no idea when she would see him again.

For a while, I just surrendered to it. Thorfinn might not be my beloved father, but, in that moment, he was a good substitute. Some faint, soft, tender chime of memory was ringing ... prompted by a small, comforting movement, or some smell common to all big, fatherly men? I didn't know. Before I could isolate it and pin it down, it was gone.

‘It was not out of malice that I had you brought here,' Thorfinn said presently. ‘It was, child, for your own safety.'

My head shot up at that. ‘My
safety
?' I cried incredulously. ‘All those miles in Einar's ship, and his fist to keep me in my place?'

‘I regret the fact that he hit you more than I can express,' Thorfinn said, and I sensed the anger simmering in him. ‘Einar is repentant, and in time I believe he will find a way to make recompense. You ... it is no excuse for what he did, Lassair, but unwittingly your words to him touched a very raw spot.'

It was a time for honesty. ‘It wasn't unwitting at all,' I muttered. ‘Einar had just abducted me, and I was very scared. I really needed a way of hitting back at him, and that taunt about him sailing a cargo boat instead of a longship was the best I could think of.'

Thorfinn gave a rueful laugh. ‘You could not have come up with a more piercing thrust had you tried,' he observed. Then he added, so softly that I only just heard, ‘The original Malice-striker was my ship.'

Yes
, I thought.
Of course
. ‘What was she like?'

‘She was long and lean, and she rode the wave tops like a sea bird gliding on wide wings,' he said, the love and the longing very evident in his voice. ‘She was light, with a shallow draught, and her high courage and adventurous spirit were daunted neither by fierce seas nor by winding rivers leading into unspeakable darkness.' He paused. ‘I drove her too hard,' he muttered. ‘I used her unkindly, for I ...' Abruptly he broke off. He was silent for a moment, and I sensed he was undergoing some internal struggle. When he spoke again, there was a cheerfulness in his tone that even a child would have known to be forced.

‘Well, Einar's craft has inherited her great spirit,' he said with an unconvincing smile. ‘The dragon head now rises up over his knarr, and a fine ship she is.'

It was, I felt, time – and not only for my sake – to return to what he'd just been saying, about the reason I'd been taken there. ‘You were about to tell me why you had me brought to you,' I said.

He looked down at me. ‘I was,' he agreed. ‘Child, as you will have surmised, Skuli Ondarson knows the general location of the shining stone. He has two very powerful motives for finding it: first, he believes that the precious inheritance should have passed down the male line, in which case it would have gone to his grandfather and not his great-aunt, and now he would be the rightful keeper.'

‘Why didn't it?' I asked.

‘Because Thorkel and his son Ondar perceived too clearly the relative merits of Ondar's daughter and son,' Thorfinn said, ‘and, while the one – his daughter Gudrun – was a worthy keeper of the magic stone, there was no doubt that the other – Ondar's son Arnor – would have turned its dangerous and formidable power to further his own dark ambition.'

‘And this son, this Arnor, was the red-headed giant's grandfather.' I was trying to get the lines of the family clear in my mind.