Talus and the Frozen King (10 page)

When he looked round, the bard had gone.

He found Talus at the end of the passage.

'Talus, why do you always ...?' Bran broke off when he saw his friend was talking to the red-haired woman who earlier had not only served them their food, but also provided the information that had lifted suspicion for the king's death from their shoulders.

'Hello,' said Lethriel. Her eyes were wide like a rabbit's and bright with tears. 'I was just saying to your friend ... I must talk to you. That's why I waved to you through the crowd.'

'I didn't see you wave.'

'There are many things you do not see, Bran,' said Talus. He turned back to Lethriel. 'You are talking to us now. What do you wish to say?'

'I mean alone. I don't know if I should ... there are things I must tell. But I don't know who to tell them to. I don't know who to trust.'

'You can trust us,' said Bran.

She measured him with a stern look. When he'd first seen Lethriel in the king's house, Bran had thought she looked like Keyli. Only now did he realise just how much that was true.

'Can I?' Lethriel said.

'Can you what?' Bran was finding it unaccountably hard to breathe.

'You have already decided the answer to that question,' said Talus. 'Otherwise you would not have been so eager to attract my attention. We are wasting time. Where can we go that is private?'

'I ... I have a house. I live there alone. I suppose we could go there, but I'm afraid people will ...'

'... talk? That is likely, and I see you do not want that. Where, then?'

Lethriel thought for a moment. 'There is a place.'

She took them through dark corridors to the eastern outskirts of the village, on the opposite side of the island to the beach where Farrum's boat had grounded. The houses here were smaller and cruder than those built by Gantor. Many were in ruins.

Soon the abandoned buildings were indistinguishable from the rocky terrain surrounding them. The path narrowed to a rough trail. A steep scramble took them up over crags and bluffs.

'Where are we going?' said Bran. But Lethriel didn't reply. Eventually the ground levelled out. They'd reached the top of the cliffs. To the east, the mainland was clearly visible across a narrow strait, a slab of black against the starry sky. To the west, there was only the open ocean.

Rising from the snow-covered ground was a great circle of massive timber posts. The space it encompassed was big enough to contain the entire population of the village. But it was overgrown with ragged sedge and stunted gorse and Bran guessed it was many years since it had been used.

Each of the encircling posts stood twice as high as a man. Once they must have stood tall and straight, but countless years of erosion had turned them into tortured relics of their former selves. Some coiled like snakes; others bent like old men sore in the bone; many were pierced with holes through which the wind whistled, making the whole clifftop sing with a low, eerie moan.

Bran ran his fingers over the nearest post. It looked like a woman writhing in pain. The wood was embossed with intricate carvings: spirals and hatched lines and deep indented dots. In some places, the patterns were etched deep; in others, the weather had worn them almost to nothing 'What is this place?' he said.

'We call it the henge. The ancestors made it when the world was younger. There's a stone in the middle—do you see it?'

'It's hard to miss it.' The stone was almost as big as the boat that had brought Farrum and his men to the island.

'They used to kill people here. They would put them on the stone and slit their throats. The blood would run out and they would drink it. In the time of ago, this was what the spirits wanted.'

'But they don't want it any more?' Bran tried to quell his anxiety. He and Talus had once had a narrow escape from a settlement where ritual sacrifice was still practised. He hoped Creyak really had left the old ways behind.

'So we believe. Nobody comes here any more. People fear it is haunted by the spirits of those who died on the stone.'

Listening to the wind sighing through the sculpted pillars, Bran could believe it. 'And this is the best place you could think of to meet?'

'The henge is my place now. The air here is just right.'

'Just right for what?'

Set between two of the standing pillars—and set partially into the ground—was a small wooden shack. Bran paused in the doorway: this was like the cairn all over again.

'Here.' Lethriel, who'd already entered, called from the darkness inside. 'There are seats.'

Bran took a deep breath and descended rotting wooden steps into a cave-like interior. It was dry and surprisingly warm.

'This way.'

Bran walked towards the sound of her voice, waving his hands in front of him. Something coarse stroked his cheek and he bit his lip to suppress a cry. Then a bony hand took his and pulled him down on to a hard surface.

'Sit down before you bump into something,' said Talus.

Gradually, Bran's eyes adjusted to the gloom. They were sitting in a square pit roofed with gnarled wooden beams. Hanging from the beams were countless bunches of herbs and winter grass, like a summer meadow turned upside-down. It was one of these bunches that had brushed his face.

'I bring my herbs here to dry,' Lethriel explained. 'The old people built it to face the rising sun. It's warm, isn't it?'

Bran looked round uneasily. Warm or not, if people said it was haunted, it probably was.

'Gantor made it safe for me,' Lethriel said. She pointed out a series of supporting columns that clearly weren't part of the original structure. 'It was his gift to me after Caltie died.'

'Caltie?'

Lethriel looked down. 'My man.' 

'Did you know Gantor well?' said Talus.

'Yes.'

'Then what happened tonight must have upset you,' Talus said.

'A man has died!'

'Yes. And it has upset you.'

Lethriel picked at the edge of her fur wrap. 'It's a long story.'

'Stories are my business. Will you tell yours?'

'I suppose I will. It's why I brought you here after all. But first I want to ask you something.'

'Ask, then. If it is a question I can answer, I will do so.'

'Are you a good man?'

There was no echo in the little shack; Lethriel's voice just soaked away into the old wooden walls like water into sand.

'I do not know what you mean by "good man".'

A breeze wafted down from the entrance, cool and dry. It seemed to spin in the enclosed space, circling each of them in turn, before fleeing again into the night. Outside, the moaning of the wind grew briefly louder. Bran shivered.

Had Gantor's death been some kind of sacrifice? The thought came to him with sudden, dreadful clarity. Had Gantor known who'd killed his father, and had the killer silenced him before he could speak?

Was Gantor's abandoned spirit even now haunting this ancient wooden henge?

The breeze rustled a string of herbs hanging directly above Bran's head. He bit his lip to stifle a scream.

'I just want to be sure I can trust you,' Lethriel was saying to Talus.

'Nothing I can say will convince you of that,' the bard replied. 'But I will tell you this: I am a man who has come. I am a man who is here. I bring nothing but myself and will take away nothing but myself when I leave. But I will do my very best to leave something behind.' 

'You speak strangely,' said Lethriel. 'What will you leave behind?'

'The truth. Will you tell us your story now?'

'Is that what you think this is? A story?'

'Stories are all that we have, Lethriel. All that we are. The time has now come to tell yours.'

The moon rose, throwing its rays deep into the little shack. Her face glowing silver in its light, Lethriel began.

'Do you remember I mentioned my man, Caltie? He and Gantor were blood-brothers. They did everything together. I think Gantor was closer to Caltie than he was to any of his real brothers.

They looked so alike. In the last world they must have been twins. They loved each other. They loved me too, both of them.'

'But you loved only Caltie?' said Bran. He could already see where this was going.

'Caltie was my man. Gantor was not.'

'How did Gantor feel about that?'

'If you'd known Gantor, you'd know what a ridiculous question that is.' The arch of her pale eyebrows hit Bran harder than a slap to his cheek.

'How did Caltie die?' said Talus.

Lethriel hitched in a long, shuddering breath. 'It was an accident. A common, careless thing.

Caltie was a great climber. He loved it up here. I suppose that's one reason I still like to come here so much. He knew a hundred different ways up and down the cliffs. He knew them better than anyone.

But it was the cliffs that killed him in the end.

'It happened when he was collecting eggs. It was the perfect job for Caltie. He used to climb down to the gull nests on the west cliff. Each season he'd make it harder and harder for himself, seeking out more and more difficult routes. He always liked to push himself to do better. One day he pushed too hard.'

'He fell?'

Lethriel nodded. 'I was down on the beach. I saw it all. I never usually liked to watch him: it scared me to see him take such risks. But this day ... I don't know, something made me go there.' She swallowed hard. 'It just happened. I took in one breath and he was safe, climbing up to the clifftop with a pouch full of eggs. I took another breath and the rock under his feet crumbled away—the cliffs are dangerous, they always have been. He fell—just fell from the cliff on to the rocks and the sea dragged him to the bottom. He died quickly.' She paused. 'So did I.'

'I'm sorry,' said Bran. She was so like Keyli it hurt his heart to look at her: the fiery colour of her hair, the line of freckles across her nose. Her presence confused him, filled him with passions he'd thought long-forgotten.

'I was sorry too. I still am. But time passed and other men wanted to take their turn with me.

One other in particular.'

'Who?' said Talus. 'If not Gantor?'

Her eyes dropped. She hesitated. 'Fethan.'

'The king's son?' said Bran.

Up came her eyes again. 'The king had many sons, Gantor among them. But Gantor is a better man than Fethan will ever be. Was a better man. They all are. Fethan is the worst of them.'

Her voice had become a snarl.

'We thought at first that it might be Fethan who killed the king,' said Bran. 'Is that why you wanted to talk to us? Do you think that too?'

Lethriel shook her head. 'Not Fethan.'

'Tell us what you think,' said Talus.

She hugged herself. Bran glanced at Talus, but the bard's attention was fixed on Lethriel.

'I've been worried for Gantor for a long time. He is—was—not popular. Not with his brothers, at least. They all think themselves big men, dashing and heroic, hunters and runners, you know. But Gantor was different. He was a thinker, a planner, a man who liked silence and the company of his own heart.'

'May I ask a question?' said Talus. 'How many of the houses in Creyak are Gantor's handiwork?'

'What's that got to do with anything?' said Bran. Lethriel shrugged. 'Not the oldest, of course. Some are nearly as old as this henge. People have lived on Creyak since before the hard snows. The old people used to hunt the mammut, or so it's said. There's a sea cave on Creyak where the paintings move with a life all their own. You can get to it from the beach.'

Bran knew of the mammut: the giant tusked beasts that once walked the world but were now gone from it. He'd once seen a mammut skull, but paintings that moved by themselves? Surely Lethriel was making that part up.

'In his life, I suppose Gantor made twenty houses,' Lethriel went on. 'He was very skilled. As you saw, most of the old dwellings here stand empty. Folk would rather live in one of Gantor's houses than out here in the eastern reaches. Gantor knew how to make a home.'

'If his son was so talented,' said Talus, 'why did Hashath choose to live in a house built by someone else?'

'How do you know Gantor didn't build the king's house?' said Bran. All the houses looked the same to him.

Lethriel was smiling, just a little. 'Yes, bard. How can you know such a thing?'

Talus laced his fingers. 'We have been given a house built by Gantor. The bones in its roof have been twisted into a spiral. The spiral shape both pleases the eye and takes out the smoke.

Many of the other Creyak houses I have been able to look into are the same. The king's house is not.

In fact, the smoke does not move well in the king's house at all. Did you not notice that, Bran?'

'It was stuffy,' Bran agreed.

'The problem could be easily fixed: a simple repair to a hanging wooden screen. Something a skilled builder like Gantor could have done in a breath or two, I have no doubt. For some reason he chose not to. Or perhaps the king never asked him.'

'You see much,' said Lethriel.

'I see that Gantor was a lonely man. I see that you and Caltie were his only friends. Gantor was a stranger to his brothers, to his father, to all of Creyak.' 

'You speak as if you knew him,' said Lethriel.

'I observed him briefly.'

'It amounts to the same thing,' said Bran.

'His father hated him,' said Lethriel. 'When Gantor offered to build the king a new house, Hashath laughed in his face. Gantor's brothers laughed too. They thought him ... they called Gantor an oaf with fancy ways. Only Cabarrath came close to showing him kindness.'

'You said that Gantor loved you.'

'In his way, yes.'

'But not as deeply as he loved Caltie?' Talus let his words float on the still, dry air. 'Is that why his father despised him? Because he was the kind of man whose heart turns not to women but to other men?'

Lethriel didn't answer. Bran wondered how he could have been so stupid. When Lethriel had said Gantor loved Caltie, she'd been speaking the absolute truth.

'Let us turn our attention to the night the king died,' said Talus. 'What do you believe happened?'