Storm at the Edge of Time (12 page)

She led them into the little room, but after glancing around, she felt there was nothing there for them. In fact, this was someplace they positively did not want to be.

She was backing out when a young man stepped from a back room and asked, “May I help you?”

Jamie wanted to bolt but tried to smile politely. “No, just looking. Taking in the sights, you know.” Then she added awkwardly, “Particularly the old things. Are there other museums around—or other places where there are old things for people to look at?”

The young man studied her closely, probably trying to place her accent, Jamie decided. He had thin brown hair and glasses, and his chin was wisped with what looked like an attempt at a beard. Maybe he was just nearsighted, but she didn't like his intense stare.

“What about the cathedral across the street?” Tyaak asked. “That should have many old things in it.”

“It does,” the young man said, quickly shifting his gaze. Tyaak just as quickly lowered his. “But you don't want to go there. That is to say, you can't. Unfortunately, the cathedral is closed this week for repairs. There are many antiquities on the island, though.”

“Anything else in town?” Jamie asked.

“Well, there's the earl's palace.”

“Earl? What earl?” Arni asked eagerly.

“Earl Patrick Stewart built it in 1607. He was a foreign tyrant and not much loved here, and the whole place fell to ruin after a hundred years. You leave here and turn right, then left at the end of the block. You'll want to look at the bishop's palace too; that's part of the complex. The first part was begun by Bishop William the Old in the twelfth century. Then, if you want farming history, there's the—”

“No thanks,” Jamie said. “Those places sound fine. We'll just give them a look and be on our way.”

She hurried out the door, through the front courtyard, and onto the sidewalk. Leaning against a building to catch her breath, she shook her head. “Definitely the wrong place. And I didn't like that guy one bit. Come on, those must be the ruined palaces over there.”

As they started off, Tyaak looked across to the cathedral. “Too bad that place is closed. At least it's still intact. Those palaces look too ruined to hold an old stick.”

When they arrived, it was clear he was right. The buildings were roofless, walls holding the stone traceries of empty windows to the sky. Between the ruined buildings, a grove of leafless trees rose up like huge claws. In their branches, a flock of black rooks cawed raucously at one another.

Discouraged, the three sat on a bench. “This isn't right,” Arni said. “Plenty of space but no people.”

Tyaak nodded his head so that another lock of hair slipped from his hood. In this light, Jamie thought, the green cast of his skin wasn't terribly obvious.

He scowled up at the trees. “All I pick up here is the racket of those wretched birds. Why would any civilized species allow such creatures to inhabit their towns? And do you realize how much this town smells? Of fuel and garbage and unwashed people as well as animals? It is almost as bad as that Viking place.”

Jamie bristled but didn't bother defending Earth cities. They weren't as bad as all that, though they could be a little smelly at times. Those birds, though—they
were
obnoxious, and kind of creepy too. The sky had been blue, but now banners of gray were sweeping in
from the west. Against that, the skeletal trees and hunched black birds looked like a Halloween card.

As she gazed up, one of the birds spread its wings and dropped from a branch. It swept down and down, directly toward them. Its cry was like a saw rasping iron.

As the bird swooped over them, Jamie looked up. Her frightened eyes met the rook's, eyes like no bird ought to have. Eyes like flaming ice—glinting a bright piercing blue.

Crouched on the grass, the three of them watched the bird. Cawing harshly, it glided over the street and the cemetery wall. Then with an abrupt flutter of black wings, it landed on a tombstone.

“Urkar again,” Tyaak said with a disbelieving shake of his head.

“Do you think we're supposed to look at that tomb-stone?” Arni asked. “I'm sure not going to dig up any old graves, if that's what he wants.”

Jamie stood up and continued staring toward the cemetery. The rook sat there cawing and occasionally flapping its wings. Just beyond his tombstone, the side wall of the cathedral ended. Around the corner would be the stone arches of the front doorways. People were moving back and forth as if going in and out of a door.

“Hey,” she said suddenly, “the cathedral's not closed. People are using the door.”

“But the man in the museum said …” Tyaak began.

“He could have been mistaken,” Arni said doubtfully.

“Or he could have wanted
us
not to go there,” Jamie said. “Which I think means we'd better—quick.”

Dodging traffic, she crossed the street, with the others close behind. Marching across the plaza, they easily opened the wooden door set in a stone archway and stepped inside.

It was like stepping into a different world. Outside was full of busy daytime noises, but in here those were all shut out. There were people about, tourists, but they talked in whispers that rose into the arched spaces overhead, blending with the echoing footfalls from the tiled floor. Outside, the cold had been driven by a fitful wind, but in here the cold was deep and still, like water pooled at the bottom of an ancient well.

Jamie looked about, trying to stretch her senses and pick up any hint of power. But it was hard to sort out anything from a general feeling of awe. Massive pillars of red stone, like the trunks of huge trees, marched down the nave. At the cathedral's sides, they stretched into arches that crisscrossed high stone ceilings, but in the middle they supported two tiers of colonnades that rose even higher into the ribs of a great arching vault.

Jamie glanced at her two companions. Tyaak was looking around with interest, but Arni was standing stock still. No, not still. He was trembling.

“Arni, are you okay?” she asked.

“It's so big,” the boy whispered. “I thought the church Earl Thorfinn built was grand. Who built this, I wonder?”

Jamie shook her head. “I don't know. Stuff in the museum said it was named after some old saint called Magnus, but I don't know who he was or anything. Maybe we should pick up a guidebook. It could help with the search, anyway.”

She walked over to where a plump woman in a bulky pumpkin-colored sweater was selling guidebooks, postcards, and bookmarks. The woman looked up with a big gap-toothed smile, and the whole effect as so jack-o'-lantern-like that Jamie struggled not to laugh.

“Could I have a guidebook to the cathedral, please? Something that tells about its history and where things are, maybe.”

“Certainly, ducks. It's this one you'll be wanting. Looking for anything in particular, are you?”

“No,” Jamie said firmly. She did not like nosy bubbly people who called her “ducks.” “We're just tourists seeing what there is to see.”

“Well, there is a great deal to see here. Maybe too much for lively young people like you. You might want to spend your afternoon doing the shops instead.”

“No, no,” Jamie insisted. “This is very interesting, really. Of course, I'm sure the shops are too. We'll just take a quick look around here and then maybe try them.”

With her guidebook purchased, Jamie walked away wondering if she was getting paranoid or if everyone was trying to keep them from looking around this cathedral.

“So what does it say about who built this place?” Arni asked once they'd settled into a couple of the plain
wooden chairs meant for worshipers to sit in when tourists weren't overrunning the building.

Jamie flipped through the book looking for the answer to Arni's question, though he kept wanting to stop and examine each picture. Finally she said, “Looks like it was begun in 1137 by Earl Rogenvald—not the same one your Thorfinn fought. According to the chart, this Rogenvald was Thorfinn's great-grandson. He named the cathedral after his uncle Magnus, who was killed by some cousin. That's how he got to be a saint. Anyway, that was about a century after your time. It started out as a smaller church and lots of people have added to it since.”

Arni reached over and shut the book. “No more. I don't think I like this magic traveling.”

Jamie looked at his face, so pale that the freckles stood out like splattered paint. “But you get to …”

He shook his head. “I'm dead. They're all dead—Earl Thorfinn, my parents, everybody I've ever known. The oddments in a museum and a few sentences in a book—that's all that's left. I don't even know what happened the night of the raid. Did my family survive? Did the Earl?” He slumped down, looking very small in his modern bright jacket. “I want to go back.”

Jamie gave him an awkward hug. “So let's go find the staff, and maybe that old wizard will let you go back.”

She pulled the young Viking to his feet and hurried him over to where Tyaak was studying a stone slab carved with a praying woman and a staring skull. “I do not understand your culture,” he said, “nor do I want to. But some of this is pretty morbid.”

“It is,” Jamie agreed, “it's grisly. But don't blame
my
culture. This planet has a whole bunch of cultures. Now, let's start looking for the staff so they don't all get blown apart and so we can get home.”

Tyaak nodded, shoving strands of bluish hair back under his hood. Then he pointed vaguely down the nave. “That way.”

As they walked slowly along, Arni said, “There are people here, and lots of space, and constructions in the space. It feels right. What do you see, Jamie?”

“Just the same, the leaping fish. But … it's not alone. Someone is—”

Her eyes suddenly focused, not on her vision but on the view over Arni's shoulder. At the guidebook desk, the woman in orange was talking to the man from the museum.

Grabbing Arni and Tyaak by the shoulders, Jamie hustled them down a side aisle. “Huny! We've got to find it
now!
”

The cathedral was full of nooks and crannies. Every stretch of reddish stone wall seemed to be carved with zigzags or figures of animals and plants. Carved tombstones were set into the walls, and there was plenty of carved wood as well—intricate screens, altars, doors, and statues. Each choir pew ended in a carved figure of angel or demon or animal. But there was no leaping fish.

Jamie was looking at things so intently, she was getting a headache. The gray light that had been sifting through the high windows was fading rapidly. Alarmed, she glanced up. Beyond the clear glass, the sky had turned slate gray. In the very back of the building,
where stained glass soared to the high ceiling, all the vibrant blues and reds had turned dark and sullen.

Jamie began to feel urgency building like a storm, and, from the pace of the others, she could tell they felt it too. As she turned a corner, a tall man suddenly loomed over her in the fading light. A statue. A king holding an ax. Jamie wondered if he'd liked to fight with an ax or if he'd been martyred by an ax murderer.

“That's Saint Olaf,” a cheery voice said suddenly. Jamie spun around to meet the jack-o'-lantern grin of the woman in orange. “The statue was presented to the cathedral in 1937 as a gift from the church of Norway. Charming, isn't it?”

“Uh, yeah. Nice.”

“Sorry, ducks, it's nearly closing time. Won't you please head back this way?” She pointed down the aisle they had just worked their way up.

Jamie was surprised when Tyaak's dark hand clasped her shoulder. “Yes, we will go now, but by the way we have not seen yet.”

Firmly he guided her to a monument-filled far corner where a marble man reclined on his tomb as if it were a living room couch. Urgently the three scanned the area while the orange woman tromped purposefully toward them.

Jamie deliberately moved away from her and, half running, almost collided with another standing statue. “Bishop William the Old,” a neat white label said; if she hadn't been so frightened, Jamie would have laughed. Who would want to go down in history known as “the Old?” She glanced up at the carved face. It looked old all right, but also … familiar. She'd seen it, just as she
had seen the fish arching itself into a crook at the top of his bishop's staff.

“A local carver made that one,” the orange woman said right behind her.

“But the bishop's staff is of a much lighter wood,” Jamie said mildly.

“Yes; supposedly the carver incorporated into it some old relic he'd found. Good thing you had a chance to see this statue. It's scheduled to be sent to Edinburgh tomorrow for some restoration work. But really, I must insist that you be on your way, children. It's past closing time.”

Gripping Jamie's arm, the woman propelled her down the aisle. Desperately she glanced back, but the others had caught the message. Arni had climbed onto Tyaak's shoulders and was reaching to pull the staff from the statue's grip.

Jamie let herself be led meekly away. The only sounds were their echoing footsteps on the tiles and the rising thrum of wind against the high windows. Beyond, the black sky was lit by a sudden flash of lightning.

The crash that followed wasn't just thunder. It was the statue of William the Old toppling to the floor with two boys toppling after it.

With a shriek, the plump woman turned and lumbered back. Sprinting past her, Jamie glimpsed the museum man running along another aisle.

Jamie reached the fallen statue, gripped the carved fish, and pulled the staff loose as easily as a sword from a scabbard. Arni and Tyaak were already leaping up some stairs to a narrow iron-studded door marked Exit. They pulled the handle, but it didn't budge.

The woman had caught up and fiercely tried to wrench the staff away from Jamie. Tyaak butted into her bulk like a football player, sending her bouncing back against a wall. Jamie leaped over William the Old and dashed in front of the altar. The young museum man stood there, cutting her off from a far door.