Madbond (7 page)

He knew better, of course, but that was his courage.

Kor squared off against me, touching his sham blade lightly to mine, which was sharp and real.

We fought. I fought at first as if he were made of eggshell, terrified of hurting him, feinting and parrying lightly with the great knife, feeling its deadly agility. Kor was hesitant at first with his wooden weapon, unaccustomed to the length of it. Then, with a glint of daring in his eyes, he deftly worked his way through my defenses and pricked me in the gut.

I struck his blade away angrily. Slighter than I though he was—and he was as strong as most men, and as tall—he was lithe, balanced, and controlled in a way that I never could be. His quick grace made me feel like an oaf. My only advantage lay in height, weight, and main strength, and almost in spite of myself I moved to use them, letting my blows be swift and heavy.

We were well matched. We circled, panting, seeking openings, parrying strokes, neither one able to force the other back. Around us the guardsmen, the twelve, formed the limits of an arena, and in a vague, questioning way I noticed how strained their faces were, how pale—

Korridun struck a skillful blow, sending me half a step backward. My curse on him, the king had the advantage of me—

The king.

Black, black, it was all black and drowning deep, and my enemy waited to kill me, and I surfaced gasping and shrieking with an eerie weapon in my hand, it broke his off at the hilt, he was helpless, mine to slay, sever his head, no, spill his innards, one slashing blow would fell him—

My—my enemy whom I loved—

I think I screamed, but I do not truly know, for I was out of my mind. Screams surged up inside me, for certain, and I faintly heard Kor shouting “Archer!” as if calling to me from a great distance, and then I came to myself somewhat, my face pressed against the rocky ground, gasping. Crumpled there, crouching like some hunted creature, and there was noise, clamor of voices, and Kor had his arm around my shoulders, trying to comfort or protect me—

“Archer, are you all right?”

I raised my head enough to look at him, to see—blood on his neck.

And I came up on my knees, hands to my head, and screamed—roared, rather, a cry that felt as if it would tear my throat out, and my heart with it. From a small distance came an answering shriek and the sound of splintering wood. Then the babbling crowd scattered as Talu came to get me.

Kor tried to hold me. But I flung him off, staggered to my feet and grasped the mare by the mane. I vaulted onto her back. A sickly trembling had overtaken me so that I scarcely had strength to ride. But ride I did, and at a dead run she took me up to the forest, through the dense spruce and along the mountain's flank, away from the headland.

Chapter Five

At some distance from the village of the Seal Kindred, Talu took me down a steep, shelving rock face to an expanse of sandy beach. She chose the path, not I. Ravaged by my own strange passions as I was, I had not even reached for the single rein of braided seal gut trailing from her headstall. The blanket that still covered the mare had wadded up underneath me, giving me a ride far more comfortable than the one the day before, but even if it had been otherwise I think I would not have noticed. I wanted only to run, hide, flee from—something I could only feel, not remember. Talu took me at an easy lope along the strand, running head up and nose thrust forward through the spray and shallow seawater that washed at the wet sand. I dare say it was beautiful, but an easy lope to cover the distance was not enough for me then. I wanted her wild, crazed gallop again. I kicked her in the ribs.

She threw me.

Limp oaf that I was that day, she threw me with a single hard buck. I fell off seaward, landed on my butt in salt water and wet sand, amazed to find myself looking up at her instead of on her. She gave a snort of scorn, spun on her hocks, and left me there.

Getting up, I set off down the strand again, stumbling even on the hard-packed sand, I was so distraught. I had no thought as to where I was going, or why. I could only walk. After a while I came to more rocks. High islets of gray-green stone towered out of the sea, some with grotesque twisted spruces clinging to them, weirdly beautiful. Greenstones, I later learned they were called, or sea stacks. One mighty stone had an arch cut in it by the sea. Landward loomed more masses of rock, and as I came around the knees of them, picking my way along the narrow margin of the sea, I came upon many seals, seals by the tens, seals spotted like winter apples with bubble-patterns of white, gray and brown, males as large as I, bewhiskered mothers, big-eyed half-grown pups. They lumbered away from me and splashed into the water, but I could have overtaken them easily, even at the walk. Carved by the sea under the lee of the rock was a tunnel or cave. More seals looked out of it, talking among themselves in yelps and squeaks of consternation because I stood between them and the water. Something about them, their ample flesh, their softly rounded furry faces, looked immensely comforting. I did not care if they turned on me to slash at me with their teeth—I walked right up to them and sank down among them. Nor did I mind their smell as of a hundred wet dogs, for I had slept in the same tent with hunting hounds all my winters. We are not reared to be squeamish, we of the Red Hart.… And smelling that reek, remembering a yellow-headed child tussling with the tan deer-hound puppies on the dirt floor, I remembered something more, and my face pulled taut with pain.

Like the infant Sakeema suckled by a cow seal I lay against the warmth of the seals' dense fur, craving comfort, burrowing ever deeper into the darkness of the seaside cave, and they accepted me.

I do not know how long I lay there, an animal gone off to lick its wounds in a dark, still place. I know I grew somewhat calmer. My panting quieted, and I passed into a merciful sort of numbness. Even when I heard footsteps I did not look up.

“Archer.”

It was Kor. He had trailed me there. “Go away,” I mumbled.

Instead he came in. The seals stolidly made way for him, and he sat cross-legged near my head. I looked up. He was only a featureless shape against the light of the entry at first, but then I saw the cut I had given him, the dark line of dried blood along his neck, the streaks where it had run down. I winced and closed my eyes, full of shame that I had hurt him, not knowing how much more I had hurt him ten days before.

“I've taken far worse,” Kor said dryly, as if sensing my thoughts. “You dropped the great knife even before it touched me. Only the weight of the blade itself struck my neck, not the strength of your arm.”

“So I am only half a madman,” I muttered.

“Archer, listen. I want—”

“Dannoc,” I told him.

“What?”

“My name is Dannoc.” It meant “the arrow” in the language of my people, and arrow-sharp pain went through me for remembering even that much—and I did not know why.

“Dannoc.” Korridun said the name softly, as if testing it, and he nodded. “Do you remember any more than that?”

“No.”

“Dannoc, listen, please. I want to tell you something.”

I laid my head against the soft flank of a gray cow seal and let him speak.

“Kela was my mother's name, as you have said, and my father's, Pavaton. I am their only living child—others died in the birthing, brothers and sisters I have never known. I am Kela's heir, for she was daughter of Kebek and king of the Seal Kindred, and my father was her consort. He was of the Otter River Clan.

“At the start of my tenth winter I was stung by an asp, up on the mountain slope, in the scree, where the whistling rockchucks live. My own stupidity—I thrust my hand right into the nest. By the time I walked back to the village, the poison was all through me. I became mortally ill, and I died.”

Startled, quite startled, I looked up at him. He was gazing off toward the ocean, somber.

“I remember leaving my body. I saw myself lying on the sealskins, a small boy, far too thin. I saw my mother weeping and my father trying to comfort her, though he was weeping as well. I wanted to say Sakeema's blessing to them, but they could not hear me.

“Then I was out over the ocean—I was a sort of flying thing, part of the air. I struggled back to the land, for I did not wish to leave it, even though something seemed to tug me toward the ocean, and I circled the headland, saw my folk putting my body in the snow, for what reason I could not imagine. I did not like to see it there, in the cold, and I hovered near for what must have been many days—I had lost sense of time—and my folk also kept watch. But my mother was not there. And the pull was still on me to go to the sea, so that I surged back and forth like the tides, and finally I left my body and the land.

“Swimming in the salt water, flying in the air, it was all one to me. Soon I was in the greendeep. Mahela, the great devourer, glutton goddess, she holds her court at the far abyss of that ocean.”

I listened intently.

Kor said, “I saw her, just for a moment. She sat raised high above everything around her, on a seat all shining with pearl and—and sunstuff, like your great knife, but even brighter. And carved into shapes more fanciful than those of driftwood, and her clothing was such as I had never seen, dress and overdress floating and flowing and edged with pearl and fringed like—like a scallop, as if she were a great sea aster. But her head and neck were the head and neck of a cormorant. And at her feet, lying as a dog might lie, was a badger.”

“A badger?” I exclaimed. “In the sea?”

“Even so. And I think there were many creatures and people around her, but I remember only dimly, I saw it all too quickly. She was hearing petition, and the petitioner was my mother in her seal form.”

I sat up, seals lying all around me, opening and closing my mouth as if I were a fish.

“I knew her by her slenderness and the pattern of her dapplings,” he added.

“Kor,” I protested, “If you are trying to divert my mind with marvels—”

“I am telling you only what is true. My mother was Kela, daughter of Kebek, daughter of rulers of the Seal Kindred back to the time of our seal ancestor Sedna, a time before the coming of Sakeema. She had power to be a seal.”

“And do you have that power?” I challenged him.

“Not at this time. Perhaps someday it may come to me. I think—perhaps I am afraid. She lost her life—”

He was having difficulty, and yet he seemed compelled to tell the tale. I sat and let him continue.

“She lost her life through the usage of that power for my sake.”

He spoke so softly that I had to lean forward to hear him.

“I saw her only for a moment, saw her there at the feet of Mahela. I felt Mahela's eyes on me, a glance like a blow. Then I remember nothing for a while. When I awoke, I was back in my own bed at Seal Hold, and my father was with me, and I was getting better. But it was some few weeks later before my mother came back.

“I was nearly well when she arrived, and she embraced me, she seemed quite placid and happy. Then she began to make her preparations. She had bargained for a year's delay, it seemed. She explained nothing to me, and even my small knowledge was too much for a child to encompass, so I told myself—what I had seen—perhaps I had dreamed. Nor did my father understand what was happening, even as she gave away belongings and set the affairs of the Kindred in order. The seasons drifted around the cycle of four. And the very last night, as she made her way down to the sea, she awoke me from my sleep and told me what was happening, so that I would not feel that she had abandoned me. Then she kissed me and left, gone back to the realm of Mahela for good.”

“So she gave herself in trade for you,” I murmured.

“She gave her life for mine.”

He paused, then finished the tale starkly.

“My father was wild with grief. She had charged him to care for the people and for me, but within a season he left both in the hands of a regent and went after her. He took a coracle, but no food or fresh water, and sailed westward.… I did not expect him to return, and he has not.”

He exhaled a long breath, blowing away the past as a fighter blows away the pain of a wound, and for a while we sat in silence.

“Is your mother yet alive, Ar—Dannoc?” Kor asked softly.

“No.”

“How did she die?”

“I—” Suddenly I was deep in blackness again, I could remember nothing, and I was angry. “I don't know!” I shouted at him, making the seals raise their heads. “Kor, will you stop trying to trick me! When I remember, I will—” I sagged, my anger gone as suddenly as it had come. “I will tell you,” I said wearily.

He was more distressed than I, then. “I was not trying to trick you into remembering,” he told me. “Or not that time. I learned better, this morning.”

“Enough,” I mumbled.

“I am sorry. I will never—”

“Let it go, I say!” The thought of the eerie knife was harrowing me. “I never question the reasons of kings. Why have you told me this strange, long tale?”

The telling of the tale had cost him somewhat, I sensed, for he did not seem wont to talk about himself.

“Because—since that time, there has been a—an odd thing about me. Since the time I was dead. I feel—call it a power if you like. I feel what other people are feeling. Joy, sometimes, or love, but also pain. I felt—I felt my parents' grief the night I died, not only my own. I could tell the difference quite plainly. An adult's grief is a more echoing thing than a child's, a child's passions are cleaner.… I felt my mother's loving courage, a courage such as I had never known. And once I was back in the body, I felt the ambitions and petty angers of people all around me. My father's grief after my mother went away nearly destroyed me. I was glad to see him leave, and hated my own joy.…”

His voice trailed off into a whisper, and he stopped, not looking at me but staring into the great eyes of a young seal pup.