Talus and the Frozen King (29 page)

Or, just perhaps, his magic.

Was he magic? Who could say? Talus had met again the man who'd destroyed everything Tia had built—a true adversary of old—yet all he could think of was the story Tia had told him about the northlight, and which had set him on the path he now walked.

It was only after the temple had fallen, when they were wandering lost and alone in the desert, that Tia had finally revealed the true identity of the travelling man from whom she'd heard the story in the first place.

'It was him,' she'd said, naming the warrior-priest, naming Mishina. 'He looked like a beggar then, but I know now it was the same man.'

'He must have been spying on you. Gathering information for his king.'

'I suppose so. It doesn't matter now. He told me that, when his work was done in the desert, he would go north himself, to see what he could see. I asked what work he meant, but he didn't answer. Now I know.' She'd gripped Talus's hands. 'When you go north—no, don't deny it, I know you want to, have wanted to ever since I told you about the northlight—promise me this: if you ever meet him again, kill him.'

Talus had never killed a man in his life. Even looking into Tia's eyes, he didn't know if he was capable of it. All the same, he said:

'I will.'

Yet, when the moment had come when he'd faced the warrior-priest once more, Talus hadn't even recognised him.

'Will you take his place?'

Talus returned from his reverie. Tharn was before him. As he spoke, he tottered in the snow; several of his men rushed to catch him but Tharn shooed them away.

'What? Whose place?' said Talus. Tharn's words had barely registered.

'You know who I mean. Will you be a wise man to us, now that Mishina is banished? For all his failings he was strong.'

'Strong?' Bringing his attention round to Tharn was hard, but by degrees Talus managed it.

After all, he was in the presence of a king.

'Yes,' said Tharn. 'I see the same strength in you, bard. But there is more: what I have just witnessed tells me you have walked under the same skies as our shaman-that-was. The two of you are connected. It is a sign. Just as Mishina was destined to leave us, so Talus was destined to stay.'

Talus shook his head. The pressure inside was beginning to ease. 'I am no shaman. I am just a bard, a mere teller of tales. As for Mishina ... yes, we share a connection. But do not ever imagine we are alike.'

'I did not say that. Will you stay?' Talus gazed at the chute down which Mishina had fled. Perhaps there was still time to pursue him. Perhaps the shaman lay at the bottom of the slide with all his bones broken, his naked body slowly caking with salt from the sea and snow from the sky.

Somehow he knew it wasn't so.

'No,' he said. 'Bran and I must leave in the morning. Our work here is done.' The words echoed in his head, a bitter reminder of another man's work in a different land, a different time.

'Then I am sorry,' said Tharn. 'Will you at least stay long enough to tell us one last tale, bard?

We go now to the cairn. I must say my last goodbyes to my father and brothers. I would have you there with me when I do it.'

Talus bowed low. 'I will come when you call.'

Tharn rested his hand on Talus's shoulder. 'Thank you.'

The king departed then, hobbling away on Lethriel's arm, leading his men through the tunnel and back to the henge, and leaving Talus and Bran alone on the ledge.

Bran slumped in the snow. He was clearly exhausted. Talus sympathised. But he couldn't rid himself of the image of Mishina's naked face.

He must have known me all along!

The wind gusted. Bran shivered. Talus hardly felt it. He was more concerned with the storm blowing through his mind. In an effort to escape it, he tipped his head back and gazed up at the stars.

'We should get back under cover,' said Bran. 'The night is cold.'

'No.'

'Why do you always have to ...?'

'Look up, my friend.'

'Talus, let's just ... oh!'

Dazzling veils of pure green light had overwhelmed the black night sky. They rolled like ocean waves, shifting colour to turquoise and blue, orange and silver. They fluttered like the wings of a million butterflies. In their beauty and their silence they stilled the turmoil in Talus's cluttered mind.

'The northlight!' said Bran said. 'It's so beautiful.'

'Yes,' said Talus. 'That is the truth.'

As the northlight danced in the heavens, the wind forced the last streamers of fog out to sea. With the air finally clear again, the tops of the waves appeared, shimmering under the moon, under the many colours of the shifting sky.

A pale shape swooped low over their heads. Bran cried out; Talus might have done so too, had he not recognised it for what it was: a winter owl chasing some small rodent through the snow.

The breath of the bird's wings was soundless on his face.

As if the owl's flight were a signal, the northlight began to dissolve. It happened fast, the myriad colours softening to a uniform glistening green before departing. As he always did when the northlight left them, Talus felt sad.

Looking west, he watched the last few remaining shards of light chase across the horizon like shining leaves caught on a hidden breeze. Their glow played over the ocean, stretching all the way to Creyak's barren north shore where the cliffs rose high and wild.

A big grey shape emerged from between two rocks and ploughed towards the deep:

Farrum's boat. Long oars pulled at the white-capped waves. At the boat's prow, a carved wolf's head scanned the distant horizon, seeking the way home.

'Well?' said Bran.

'Well what?' It was immensely peaceful standing here in the snow. Talus didn't want the moment to end.

'Are you going to tell me what that was all about?'

Talus rubbed his hand over the top of his bald head. Already he could feel his thoughts growing agitated again. But that was all right. A man could only stand still for so long.

'What what was all about?'

'Mishina, of course.'

'And of course I will tell you, Bran. The tale of my past is one I have never told you and which you deserve to hear ... and hear it you will before we next make landfall. But first I must do the bidding of the new king of Creyak. I have no doubt he will ask a story of me as well and I am afraid the king's will comes before that of the fisherman.'

The eastern sky was beginning to brighten, not with the northlight but with the dawn.

Another day already, with so much to be done. And so far still to go.

Talus bounded away through the snow. The dawn intensified with every step he took. He felt filled with energy and entirely alive.

After all these years—Mishina! The name might have been different but the man was the same. And so was his purpose—Talus was sure of this. Which could mean only one thing.

I have been given another chance!

Even better, there was a new puzzle to solve.

The bone hunter will bring your story to an end.

Who was the bone hunter? And had Mishina really travelled as far north as he'd claimed?

The questions were delicious. Talus savoured them. The answers were far from reach, lost in darkness and mist.

But he would seek them out.

'Talus?' said Bran as he trudged through the snow after the bard. 'What do you mean:

"before we next make landfall"?'

Lethriel was waiting for them at the henge. Behind her, the sky was a rich and gorgeous purple. The coarse grass rippled in the breeze. High overhead, a gull circled.

As Bran came up to her, Lethriel placed her hands on his shoulders.

'I thought you'd gone with Tharn,' he said.

'I wanted to see you.' She hesitated. Talus regarded them both with open curiosity.

'We'll catch up with you, Talus,' said Bran.

'I can wait,' Talus replied.

'There's no need,' said Lethriel.

Talus didn't move. Bran waited. Smart as he was, sometimes the bard could be so slow.

'Oh,' Talus said at last. 'I'll ... be on my way.' He paused. 'Thank you, Lethriel, for your help.'

'You're welcome. I'll see you at the cairn.'

'Yes, of course.'

The bard turned on his heels and loped away across the henge.

'What did you want?' said Bran when Talus had gone. It was good being close to Lethriel again. Difficult too.

'Just to say goodbye.'

'Goodbye?'

'It's the only time we'll have, Bran. Soon you'll be gone and I'll be with the king.'

'It's where you want to be.'

Lethriel laughed. The sound fluttered out across the henge as if it had wings. Bran felt himself relax.

'Yes, Bran. It always was. But I had to make sure you'd be all right. That you'd find a place where you want to be too. And ...'

'And what?'

'I wanted to hear the rest of your story.'

'My story?'

'In the cave you told me about your wife. About Keyli. I know she died but I know too that somehow you're still searching for her. I don't understand how that can be but I can see it clearly.

It's like a light behind your eyes. Or a shadow. For some reason, you still have hope. I want to know where that hope comes from. I need to know.'

'Because of Caltie?'

'Yes. And Gantor. Because of all of those who died. I know ... I know they've gone to be with the spirits in the afterdream. I know that if I wait I'll meet them again, when my turn comes. And I know in the meantime that Tharn will love me ...'

'But?'

'But waiting is so very hard.'

The wind gusted, blowing scraps of snow through the henge. The dawn rushed towards them.

'Talus says ...' Bran paused, began again. 'After Keyli died—right from the very moment she died—I lost all hope. I saw no reason to carry on living. I wanted to wade out into the water and follow her into the afterdream.'

'But Talus stopped you?'

Bran considered this. For a long time, the memories of that dreadful night had been trapped in his dreams. He'd been trapped too, unable to speak about them, unable to escape. Finally telling the story to someone—to Lethriel—had liberated him.

'He didn't exactly stop me. He ... I suppose he gave me a choice. Talus told me that he was travelling. That he'd been travelling for a long, long time. He said there was an empty place on the path at his side, and asked me if I wanted to walk with him. I asked him where he was going. Can you guess how he answered me?'

'How?' Bran grinned to think of it. 'He told me a story, of course. A short one. Do you want to hear it?'

'If you can remember it.'

'Every word. This is what Talus said: "A great queen once claimed that, in the far north of the world, lies a place where the northlight meets the ground. The place is called Amarach. It is a place where all the worlds meet: this world, the afterdream, and many others. If a man can only find his way to Amarach, he will be rewarded with a single moment in which he will see again all the people he has lost in his life. Inside that moment will come a single chance to go with them, or to bring them back home. Or to say goodbye forever. To find this place is hard, but if a man is both strong and true it may be done."'

Bran realised he was crying. Lethriel touched his tears.

'It sounds like a story told to comfort a child,' she said.

'I know,' Bran replied, 'and it comforted me for the longest time, all the time we journeyed north, even through the coldest depths of winter. But hope can only last so long. By the time we'd reached Creyak, I'd stopped believing Amarach even existed. I was tired of hoping, tired of dreaming.

I'd decided to turn back.'

'And now?'

Bran dragged his good hand through his matted beard. 'I'm ready to go on again.' Saying it aloud was a revelation.

'What changed your mind?'

'A little of this place. A little of you.'

'And?'

Bran sighed. 'Mostly I think it's because the tale of Amarach is one of the tales of Talus.' He took her kind hand and squeezed it. 'And that can only mean one thing.'

'What?'

'That it's true.'

The sun rose. Strong men retrieved Arak's body and carried it up from the beach; others brought poor Sigathon from the totem pit. As he stood in the cairn, it seemed to Bran that Gantor, who'd been placed at his father's side the previous day, looked less lonely now in the presence of his brothers.

The whole of Creyak was there. Many of the villagers were crammed into the cairn, making its confines hot and cramped. Even more were gathered in a great crowd outside. Their faces - freshly painted with pure white mud—were turned up to the sky. Their singing was low and sad and filled with love.

Bran felt honoured to be one of those allowed inside. All his fear of the cairn had gone.

Perhaps the press of living bodies made him feel safe. Or perhaps he'd changed.

Tharn took Mishina's place as speaker-for-the-dead during the funeral ceremony. Nobody questioned his right to do this. After all, he was the king. At his side was Cabarrath, whose injuries from his encounter with Arak at the henge were superficial. Fethan had survived too, but his wounds were too severe for him to attend. Bran hoped he would live.

Tharn's words were halting; he was prompted frequently by Lethriel, who was familiar with shaman ways and able to direct all the small but essential rituals like the lighting of fragrant fires, the chanting of the names of the afterdream waykeepers and the drumming of the heartbeat-echoes of the newly dead.

It was the drumming that affected Bran the most—even more than the heady stench of burning grasses that filled the cairn's crowded interior, or the low murmuring of the foot-trampling throng that surrounded him. The drumming was like thunder in his head and, just for a moment, he was back inside the storm.

A burst of flame illuminated the little door that led, so they said, to the afterdream. The door looked impossibly close. Bran wanted to touch it, wanted to see it slide open, wanted to see what - or who—lay beyond. But there were too many people in the way.

The drumming subsided, the moment passed.