Talus and the Frozen King (27 page)

'So what changed?'

'When you stumbled over her hiding place, Alayin was in the process of doing what every woman has a reputation for doing especially well.'

'And what's that?'

'Changing her mind.'

Talus broke off. Long shadows were flowing over the henge pillars to the south. Gradually, the sound of battle was drowned by a low chanting. One by one, white-painted faces appeared against the star-filled sky. It was the rest of the villagers—the entire island community, by the look of it. The parade of the king, come at last. 'Creyak has thawed,' Talus said.

In the Sleeth ranks, raised weapons began to lower. Farrum's men bunched together, trading axe-swings for shouted insults. Then, slowly, they began to retreat.

For a moment, Talus thought the men of Creyak would press home the advantage; with so many reinforcements, how could they fail? Instead they fell back, while behind them the newly-arrived villagers made a silent wall around the henge's perimeter.

'What are they waiting for?' said Bran.

'These people are the product of Hashath's peace,' said Talus. 'They have come not to influence events but to witness them ... and to honour their new king, whoever he may be.'

Down in the crater, Mishina had limped from behind the cordon of boatmen and out into open space. He carried himself with all his former pride. Despite the smeared paint on his face and the blood on his robes, he was shaman still.

He thumped his staff three times in the snow. The shells hanging from it made a ringing noise that seemed to merge with the moonlight, making it shimmer. On both sides, weapons hung slack at the sides of their owners. Mishina began to chant. One by one, the watching Creyak villagers sank to their knees.

Talus shot a glance across the henge to where Lethriel was kneeling at the side of the fallen Tharn. Neither he, Cabarrath or Fethan had moved.

'So now it's just Arak,' Bran said. 'He's won after all. Mishina will pronounce him king of Creyak. We can't do anything to stop it.'

'Perhaps not. But there is someone who can.'

Mishina's chanting rose in pitch. Farrum too was in the open now, striding across the snow towards Tharn and Lethriel. In his gnarled right hand he held his obsidian swathe.

Farrum had covered barely half the distance to the king's body when Lethriel stood. A gust of wind billowed her red hair out into a fan.

'Come no further, Farrum!' she shouted. 'The king is dead. I'll suffer no man to disturb his peace!'

Farrum kept walking, the swathe swinging at his side.

A few of the Creyak men who'd backed away from the fighting gathered behind Lethriel.

Several more clustered around the motionless bodies of Cabarrath and Fethan. They all brandished chert weapons smeared with Sleeth blood.

Farrum faltered; his old, scarred face was etched with uncertainty. 'You're lying.'

'I'm telling you the truth. Tharn is dead. His brothers too. You've done what you came to do.

Now just go.'

The wind was gusting harder. Grey tendrils of fog curled up behind the watching villagers, as if the weather too wanted to bear witness to the proceedings.

Farrum regarded the glowering Creyak warriors, his lips pressed hard together. 'It's of no consequence,' he growled and made his way back to the middle of the henge.

Mishina stopped chanting. With a crooked finger, he summoned Arak. The boy jumped down from the boulder and made his way through the snow to the shaman's side. At another gesture from Mishina, the two Sleeth warriors hauled Alayin over. She hung limp in their grasp, head lolling, feet dragging in the snow. They forced her upright; when they let go she remained standing, although she swayed from side to side, clearly dazed.

'We have to do something,' said Bran.

'Yes,' said Talus. 'We have to wait.'

'No, I mean we've got to stop this.'

'Events will run their course, Bran.'

'Oh. So you're happy that Tharn's dead and the scheming shaman is going to hand over the kingship to a murdering drug-addled boy and the vicious foreign warlord is going to win back the island he's coveted all his life?'

Talus was impressed by Bran's summary of the situation. It was almost enough to spur him to action. Almost. 'That is not what will happen,' he said.

'So you can see the future now?'

'I cannot see the future, Bran. But I can see the truth. At the heart of all this turmoil, Bran - amid all these murders—there exists a single calm centre: a still point about which all else turns.

When I speak of truth, this is what I mean. It is something you will see for yourself, Bran, one day.'

Talus sensed rather than saw the shiver that passed down Bran's spine. He listened to the buzzing in his own head. He placed his hand on that of his companion.

'You must trust me, Bran,' he said. 'This is what I do, and it is all that I do. Every day I see something different. Today, I see a young woman torn by uncertainty yet strong enough to know her own mind when it finally speaks to her.'

'Alayin,' said Bran. 'She's what this is all about, isn't she? That's what you meant about the calm centre. It's all about Alayin.'

'It always has been.' The thought came from nowhere, swiftly followed by another. 'And always will be.'

If these last words struck Bran as odd, the former fisherman didn't show it.

By now, Farrum had reached the place where Arak and his daughter were standing. He stopped. His air of uncertainty had intensified. Slowly he held up the swathe. The moonlight lanced off the strange glass blade and a shiver travelled down Talus's spine.

Arak took the weapon, Farrum stepped aside and Mishina's voice echoed again across the crater.

'Arak is king,' said the shaman. Three words, a minimal proclamation, yet all that was needed. The words hung in the night.

Mishina took Arak's hand—the one that wasn't holding the swathe—and placed it on Alayin's. The queen-to-be was considerably taller than her king. She gazed down on him with blank eyes.

Mishina murmured something Talus couldn't hear. The shaman looked first at Arak, then at Alayin. Then he stepped away from the couple, ushering both the old warlord and his retinue of boatmen with him. They retreated all the way to the henge's northern edge, where Farrum's bruised and bloodied army awaited them.

Arak and Alayin stood alone under the moonlight, hands clasped together, each looking deep into the other's eyes.

'You know what's going to happen next,' said Bran. 'Don't you?'

'More or less,' Talus replied.

Arak raised his free hand to stroke Alayin's cheek. His other hand was tight on the haft of Farrum's swathe. The muscles in his legs tensed as he stretched himself up, bringing his lips close to those of his new bride. Unaccountably, the thought of them kissing revolted Bran.

Alayin spat in Arak's face.

Arak reacted instantly, swinging the swathe round so that its blunt wooden edge smacked hard against Alayin's ribs. She staggered, crying out. Arak struck again, but already Alayin was running. Her stupour had just been an act. The ice-bear furs blew like a blizzard behind her.

Arak gave chase. Everyone else—Farrum and Mishina included—looked on dumbfounded.

Bran stood. Alayin was making straight for the wolf's-head crag of rock from which he and Talus were watching.

'What's she doing?' Bran said.

'Go to her,' Talus replied.

Bran started clambering down. Alayin had already covered most of the ground between the sacrificial boulder and the crag. As Bran had already observed, she was fast. But Arak was faster, and he reached Alayin long before either Farrum—who'd finally given chase—or Bran could get anywhere near.

Arak used the swathe to trip the fleeing Alayin, then grabbed the hood of her furs and started dragging her through the snow. Bran marvelled at the strength of this slight young man, then remembered that here was the murderer who'd stabbed his own father in cold blood and then hauled his corpse hundreds of paces to its final resting place.

Bran lowered himself gingerly over the slippery rock, his view of Arak and Alayin momentarily obscured. He dangled for a moment, took a deep breath and let go, bouncing twice off the rock before landing in a fortuitous mound of snow, which on this side of the henge had gathered into deep drifts. The same drifts were slowing down Farrum and the line of boatmen ploughing after him.

Arak and Alayin had vanished.

Bran whirled round. What magic was this? He waded through the snow, scooping it aside with his hands.

'Talus!' he called. 'Did you see where they ...?'

The bard's finger shot out, pointing straight at the base of the crag. Bran pushed on through the snow, ducking his head as he passed under the jaw of the wolf's stone head. Darkness yawned: the narrow entrance to a cave he hadn't spotted until now.

Bran crawled inside. The cave turned out to be a narrow tunnel with a shattered and treacherous floor sloping steeply down. Beyond the entrance there was just enough room to stand.

All the same, Bran kept his head low as he hurried through the darkness; the last thing he wanted to do was crack his skull open on the ceiling. He stumbled twice before the tunnel walls finally peeled back and spat him on to a broad shelf of rock.

Sudden wind blasted into Bran's face. He blinked back tears. Beyond the rocky shelf was a sheer drop. Thick fog obscured its depths but already the wind was beginning to tear it apart.

Just short of the edge stood Arak, his wiry arm tight around Alayin's neck, the swathe's obsidian blade brushing her skin. She was trembling, her nostrils flaring, her breath spurting in short gusts of vapour from between her lips.

Someone crashed into Bran from behind. It was Farrum. The old warlord looked haggard and lost. Bran hated the king of Sleeth for the part he'd played in this debacle. At the same time he knew Farrum was afraid for his daughter's life. Still, he found it hard to feel sympathy.

'Happy now, old man?' he growled.

Farrum said nothing, just extended his hands towards Arak in a mute plea.

Bran took a cautious step forward. 'Let her go, Arak,' he said. 'There's nowhere left for you to run.'

'Stay back!' said Arak. He touched the lethal swathe to Alayin's neck. She flinched. Her eyes locked on Bran's, pleading.

'It's all over, son,' said Farrum. 'I've given you everything I promised. Everything you wanted.

You're king now.'

'I don't want to be king,' said Arak. 'I never wanted to be king. I just wanted her.' He shook Alayin, as if there could be any doubt about who he meant.

'Arak,' said Bran. He took another step. He could feel the slippery ground trying to trick him towards the precipice. 'Arak, I'm sorry, but it doesn't matter how much you want Alayin. She doesn't want you.'

Something swam briefly behind Arak's eyes. Understanding? It was there and gone so fast that Bran couldn't be sure. What replaced it was pure wrath.

'I'll kill her,' Arak yelled. 'I'll kill us both, I swear it!'

'You will not,' came a voice from the tunnel.

Talus stepped out into the moonlight, slipping first past Farrum, then past Bran. In just two breaths he'd halved the gap between himself and Arak, moving confidently despite the iciness of the ledge.

'Don't you start spinning one of your clever stories,' said Arak. He edged backwards. Now his heels were on the very brink of the drop. Bran could hear Alayin's breath hissing in and out through her tortured throat. Still she was looking at him. 'There's no way back for me now, bard.'

'If a path leads in, Arak, it must also lead out,' said Talus. He stopped and stood motionless with his palms pressed together.

'I've made my place in the afterdream. They're waiting for me there now, all of them. At least this way I take my queen with me.'

'Alayin does not wish to accompany you.'

'You think I don't know that?'

'There is another way.'

'Oh yes? And what's that?'

'Take your place at the side of the true king of Creyak. Tell him how sorry you are and pay for what you have done, not in the next life but in this. Pay by giving your service to the king, Arak. Help him light a fire to thaw the ice that has kept Creyak frozen for so long. Work hard and you may yet gain the respect you have lost. Life is long, Arak, long enough for a man to do such things and more.

Other worlds await, and you may yet enter them on your own terms. Admit the truth both to others and to yourself, and earn the right to walk tall, with your head high, at the side of the true king.'

Throughout Talus's speech, Arak's pupils had grown wider and wider. Suddenly, the boy's hold on Alayin looked like not a captor's but a lover's, and Bran believed that, somehow, the bard had convinced him.

'The ... true king?' said Arak. His voice quavered. 'I don't know what you mean.'

'The bard means me,' said Tharn, staggering out of the tunnel. He was leaning on Lethriel, who appeared to be bearing almost all his weight. His legs were clotted with the blood that had flowed down from the wound on his back and his voice was thick with pain. But he was alive.

Arak's pupils snapped down to tiny points of darkness. His lip curled, exposing small white teeth.

'It's a trick,' he said. 'Shaman magic. You're the same, both of you.' He plucked the swathe from Alayin's neck and swung it first at Talus, then at Mishina, who'd appeared from nowhere to stand beside the bard. Arak rose on the balls of his feet, poised as if ready to spring.

Bran was watching Alayin closely. The instant the swathe had left her throat, she too had tensed.

'Jump,' Bran said under his breath. 'For your life, woman, jump.'

'Arak,' said Tharn. He shrugged himself free of Lethriel's support and stumbled forward.

'Brother, let this end here.'

Tears sprang into Arak's eyes. 'Yes, Tharn,' he said. 'It will.'

He stepped backwards into space, his arm still locked around Alayin's neck. He said nothing as they fell. Alayin screamed. Just as her feet kicked into empty air, she managed to wrench herself free. Her arms flailed, seeking solid ground. But she'd left it too late and the fog sucked them both down.