Talus and the Frozen King (30 page)

'And now,' said Tharn, speaking over the dying echoes of the drums, 'the bard will tell us his final tale.'

Talus's story was about an old man who walked across a desert to fetch water for his family.

He journeyed for many days over dunes of yellow sand and lakes of white salt. He did battle with venomous snakes and ravenous wolves. Finally he reached a deep hole filled with pure, clear water.

He filled his watersacks and made the return trip, which was just as perilous as the journey out had been.

Eventually the old man came home. But when he went up to his wife and children he found they could not see him. When he spoke to them, he found they did not hear. When he tried to give them the water he had brought, he found it had turned to sand.

Then the old man saw his own dead body lying on a funeral pyre. As the flames carried his spirit away to the afterdream, the last thing he saw was the tears his family were shedding, and he understood that water had come to them after all.

Just as Talus concluded his tale, a dazzling beam of sunlight stabbed through the cairn entrance. The smoke filling the cairn turned orange in the new morning haze. The low chanting of the mourners subsided. The fires went out. The funeral was over.

The king and his sons had passed out of this world and into the next.

Slowly the cairn emptied. Bran let the crowd jostle him outside. Just as he emerged into the dawn light, Cabarrath found him and pulled him to one side. The tall man looked distraught.

'I am sorry I struck you, Bran,' he said. 'I saw you on the beach ... the fog ... I thought you were one of Farrum's men.'

'It was an easy mistake to make,' said Bran. 'But I have a hard head.'

'Then you forgive me?'

'There's nothing to forgive. Will Tharn be all right, do you think?'

'He will be a great king. A king-of-the-summer. And I will serve him. We all will. I see your friend over there. You should go to him.'

Talus's bald head was just visible over the crowd. It bobbed like a float in the ocean as the bard jumped up and down. He waved, trying to attract Bran's attention.

'Look after your brothers, Cabarrath,' said Bran.

'I will.'

Talus continued to wave as Bran pushed his way through the mass of villagers. He looked like an excitable child.

'Tharn wishes to meet us at a sea-cave on the beach,' he said as soon as Bran was at his side.

'He says he has something to show us.'

'What is it?'

'The king wishes it to be a surprise. What did you think of my tale?'

'It was a fine story. It made me feel ... well, calm, I suppose. Even if I don't know what it meant.'

'Some tales do not mean anything at all, but that does not mean they are without power.'

'You know, this morning I might actually agree with you.' Bran watched the last of the mourners traipse out of the cairn and into the early light. 'This surprise of Tharn's—I suppose you know what it is already?'

With twinkling eyes, Talus led Bran towards the sea.

It was the same cave in which Bran and Lethriel had sheltered the previous night. In the daylight, the painted scenes on its sea-smoothed walls looked drab and still. Bran recalled how, in the moving light of the fire, they'd come to life.

Just inside the cave entrance, the new king stood tall despite the pain he carried and his obvious exhaustion. On his head he wore a circlet of woven willow twigs: the crown of Creyak.

Lethriel was at his side. Their hands were entwined.

'So, what's this surprise?' said Bran.

Without speaking, Tharn and Lethriel descended the sloping floor towards the back of the cave. Talus and Bran followed them round a polished knuckle of black rock to find themselves standing before a vast slab of flat stone that looked as if it had long ago fallen from the ceiling.

Lying on the slab, propped in place by angled wedges of driftwood, was a boat.

Bran, for no reason he could fathom, wanted to cry. To hide his emotion, he walked a slow circle around the vessel. It was a dugout, much cruder than Farrum's seal-skin ship but undeniably beautiful. Its hull was carved from a single trunk of oak; Bran had seen no such trees growing locally and wondered where it had come from. Four sturdy limbs splayed wide, two from each side of the hull. Between them they supported a pair of outrigger pontoons woven from willow branches.

'Impressive,' he said as he returned to Talus's side. He didn't trust himself to say any more.

'It's yours,' said Lethriel.

'Do you mean it?'

'Take it,' said Tharn. 'May it carry you at least a little further on your way.'

Bran ran his good hand along the nearer of the two outriggers. 'Who made it?'

'Fethan,' said Tharn. 'My father forbade such things, but he built it all the same. Fethan always dreamed of leaving Creyak, even before he starting a child growing inside his favourite woman.'

'You knew about that?'

Tharn gave a sad smile. 'I am his first-brother. There is not much I do not know.'

'Will he be all right?'

'He has a lot to live for,' said Lethriel. 'When we've finished here, I'll go to him. I know remedies. And there are plenty of tender hands ready to soothe his hurts.'

Bran swallowed. He couldn't take his eyes off the boat. 'Then I suppose this is where we say goodbye.'

'That is your choice,' said Tharn. 'I would have you stay as long as you wish, but ...' He looked at Talus.

The bard joined Bran beside the boat.

'The weather is fair,' said the bard. 'The lifting of the fog shows a change of weather to the south. Winds are rising that will help to carry us north. Our work here is finished. There is no reason for us to stay.'

'Well,' said Bran. 'I suppose that decides it.'

They kicked away the driftwood chocks and turned the boat to face the cave entrance.

'We might need some help,' said Bran as he uncoiled the ropes he'd found tucked under the bow.

'The boat is lightly made,' said Tharn. 'I believe you will manage.'

He was right. Big as it was, the boat was so artfully carved that it weighed barely half what Bran had expected. All the same, by the time he and Talus had dragged it to the water's edge, his bearskin was damp with sweat.

He was about to climb aboard when he remembered something.

'Our things,' he said. 'Our packs, water sacks—they're still in the house.'

'No, they're not,' said Lethriel.

She pulled back a tanned leather panel concealing a well in the centre of the boat's hull.

There was Bran's pack, the little pouch containing Talus's firelighting kit ... everything they'd been carrying with them when they'd first crossed the causeway to Creyak.

'Are you trying to get rid of us?' said Bran.

Lethriel laughed. 'We just knew that, once you saw this boat, there'd be no stopping you.

Mind you, Talus, we've made a liar out of you.'

Talus raised one eyebrow. 'Explain yourself.'

'When we first met, at the henge, you told me that when you left Creyak you would take nothing away.'

'Indeed I did. Nor shall we. As you said yourself, this boat belongs to my good friend Bran.'

Bran stroked both his hands—the good and the bad—along the hull of the boat. He smiled.

'All boats should have a name,' he said. 'What's this one called?'

'Its skin has not yet touched water,' said Tharn, 'so it does not yet have a name.'

'Why don't you give it one?' said Lethriel.

'What do you think, Talus?' said Bran.

The bard ran his finger over his chin. 'I believe the choice must be yours.'

Bran didn't have to think very hard.

'Keyli,' he said. 'The boat is called Keyli.'

Moments later, the boat was wallowing in the shallows. Talus climbed nimbly aboard and Bran followed. They picked up the broad paddles stowed in the hull and used them to shove the boat away from the shore. Tharn and Lethriel stood on the shingle with their hands raised in salute.

'I'm sorry we had to know you in such hard times,' said Bran as the boat's hull finally bounced clear of the stony sea bed.

'They were not of your making,' said Tharn. 'And I am glad you came with them. Especially you, Talus.'

'You honour me,' the bard replied.

The morning sun cleared the cliff, unleashing warm light on to the beach. The shingle turned gold beneath it.

'No winter lasts forever,' called Tharn. He was dwindling now, growing smaller as Bran's oar-strokes pulled them out towards the open sea. 'A thaw is coming.'

Lethriel shouted something, but the wind tore her words apart and they were lost. Soon it was too late even to wave. Creyak was a white-capped rock melting slowly into the larger coast.

Ahead, the ocean was vast and welcoming.

'Well,' said Bran, 'you found your way to the truth in the end. There's still something that puzzles me though. Why did Arak collect all those things? The fur from Alayin's wrap I understand. But Lethriel said he'd stolen things from all his brothers.'

'A good question, my friend. Consider the bonespike Arak stole from Gantor—the weapon he used to murder his father. You found it in the cairn, hidden behind the door to the afterdream. How did it come to be there?'

'Arak didn't want anybody to find it, so he hid it.'

'A peculiar hiding place, do you not think? Would it not be simpler to throw it into the sea?'

'I don't know. I suppose so. So why did he put it there?'

'It was a gift.'

'A gift?'

'Yes. You must remember Mishina's role in all this. All the time he was urging Arak on, he was also reassuring him that he would be safe from the ancestors' wrath. I believe Mishina instructed Arak to take trophies from each of his victims and put them through the door. Not to hide them, but to send them on in advance to the afterdream. When Arak eventually died and entered the afterdream himself—no doubt after living a long and happy life as king of Creyak—he would retrieve the trophies and return them as gifts to their dead owners. In this way, he would appease the spirits of those he had killed and escape the tortures awaiting him.'

'I suppose you worked that out right away.' Feeling a little stupid, Bran resolved not to ask any more questions.

'Alas no,' said Talus. 'Throughout this whole affair my heels have dragged in the dirt. The years have made me slow, Bran, so slow that I missed my own chance to make right the past.'

'Ah—this is about you and Mishina, isn't it?'

'Are you asking me to tell you my tale now, Bran?'

'You promised you would. "Before we next make landfall," you said.'

Talus put down his paddle and took up station in the prow. The dugout wallowed in the sea's heavy swell, but the outriggers kept it stable. The boat was fast and light, responsive to Bran's every move. He'd already fallen in love with it.

'Indeed I did. But, if I begin, will I be able to finish? It is a long story, Bran. I want to be sure you will still be here for the end.'

'What do you mean?'

'Think back to that night on the clifftop when we first looked down on Creyak. You told me you wanted to turn back. You told me you wanted to go home.'

'I suppose I did.'

'Is that how you feel now?'

'No.'

'Then I will ask you this.' He turned to face Bran. His face was the same gold as the shingle on the beach. 'Do you still wish to come with me to the top of the world, where the northlight touches the snow and many strange things may be possible?'

Bran tried to imagine this faraway place that Talus had described to him so many times before. But all he could conjure was the red glow of Lethriel's hair floating in the darkness of the cave. He thought about the story he'd told her there: a tale of lost love and falling stars. His story.

'More than ever before,' he whispered.

'Then ask me once again the question you asked on the cliff.' Bran had to think hard. He remembered the dying fire, and the distant screams from the island. He remembered the northlight fading from the sky.

Finally he remembered what he'd said.

'Is it true that love survives death?'

Talus smoothed his scalp with the palm of his hand and gazed at the crisp northern horizon.

'Let us find out.'

Graham Edwards was born in England near Glastonbury Tor and now lives in Nottingham (it wasn’t such a big leap from King Arthur to Robin Hood). His formative years were spent on England’s Jurassic Coast making disturbing Super-8 films. And drawing spaceships. And writing. Art college in London led to a career as a graphic designer and animator. He’s also worked as a scriptwriter and multimedia producer for theme parks and visitor centres.

Graham’s first novel
Dragoncharm
was directly inspired by
Watership Down
. If Richard Adams could write an epic adventure about rabbits, why not do the same for dragons?
Dragoncharm
and its sequels all received nominations for Best Novel in the British Fantasy Awards. Later novels include
Stone & Sky
, in which Graham explores the dizzying heights of a world-sized wall, travels in time and plays with fairies.