Wild Magic (42 page)

I will make my way to Eyra.

Gone were all the manifold reasons with which he had previously caged himself: if the stone were to be kept from Tycho Issian’s hands and that terrible revelation of the future averted, to travel as far as he could out of the Lord of Cantara’s grasp seemed his only possible course of action. That the stars seemed to have offered him their own encouragement merely added to his determination, so that within moments a sudden notion carried all the force of epiphany, and became a decision as compelling as any made after months of prudent forethought and planning.

Nineteen

The Long Serpent

Katla, working in the forge late into the night on the sword she had promised herself she would make for Tor Leeson’s family – to honour the memory of his death, or to sell for whatever price they could get for it – stopped her beating and listened intently. There was, beyond the echo of the hammer on the anvil, a zinging in her head; and in addition to the vibrations her body had absorbed from the iron there was something else – in the air, maybe, or in the ground beneath her feet. She laid down her tools, placed the half-made sword carefully upon the table, and spread her hands on the stone floor in an attempt to locate and identify the sensation; but it was gone, only the faintest resonance of it left echoing in the quartz veins deep below the island. She frowned. Something felt slightly out of true, askew in the world.

Katla glanced back at the sword. It was a fair piece of work; good, but not fine. She had known it all along, ever since the first rough fashioning. Nothing she had attempted since returning to Rockfall after the shipwreck had satisfied her exacting standards, although others exclaimed in wonder over the artistry of the niello tracery with which she had been experimenting, the intricate designs of silver wire winding like serpents around hilt and tang and down into the fuller. But she knew it was mere decoration, fancy patterns to maze the eye and distract from the integrity of the blades. Her heart was no longer in it. The sea-monster had taken something of her with it down into the ocean abyss, along with her brother and her friends.

She wiped her hands on her tunic, doused the fire and left the forge. The long house was in darkness, but she was not tired enough to seek her bed. Instead, she wrapped herself in a thick cloak and chose the track that led to Whale Strand. By the light of a moon which hung large over the island she made her way down towards the cliffs, following the paler sand through the dark furze and brush, and thence took the wider path that issued out onto the beach, her breath steaming in the freezing air. There, she found the Master of Rockfall’s great ice-breaking vessel, complete but for its mast, rising from the strand like a ship out of legend. The sight of it made her shiver.

‘Beautiful, isn’t she?’

Katla almost fell over to hear another voice. She spun around, both hands at her mouth to stifle the cry which threatened to escape her. It was Aran Aranson, seated with his back to a pile of timber, so still he looked himself like a stock of wood.

‘By Sur, Da you gave me a shock!’

Her father smiled, but he did not take his eyes off the ship. The expression in them was vague and dream-filled: he seemed like a sleepwalker, Katla thought. ‘I’m going to call her the
Long Serpent
,’ he said softly.

She sat down beside him so that she could take in the vessel’s long hull and elegant curves from the same angle. ‘Hmm,’ she said appraisingly after a while. ‘She’s certainly as sinuous as any snake; but is that not an ill-starred name for such a ship?’

A crease appeared in Aran’s broad forehead. ‘Ill-starred?’

‘Is it wise to name your vessel after Sur’s greatest enemy?’

‘Sur has paid little attention to my prayers over the years,’ her father snorted. ‘So why not appease the monster that overturned his precious
Raven
and dumped him in the Northern Ocean? Might leave us alone when we sail into her treacherous waters. It would hardly do to lose another fine ship, would it, now?’ His voice was hard and flat. It was the nearest he had come to referring to the loss of the
Snowland Wolf
and his eldest son, in her hearing, at least.

She grimaced. ‘It’s a good name, Da: mythic and brave, as befits a vessel bound on such a great expedition.’ She waited a few seconds before adding, ‘When will you set out?’ He had, she knew, selected the larger number of his crew: twenty-four men from Rockfall itself and the outlying islands. They had been coming to the steading for weeks now, as tales of the fame and fortune to be won from a mysterious arctic land filled with ancient treasure spread far and wide across the Westman Isles: old and young, experienced seamen and green lads, all eager for adventure and daring deeds. Most of them had wives and children at home; many had land and animals to care for, while others had neither a woman nor a bean to their name and hoped to come quickly by sufficient means to furnish themselves with land and wives and a boat of their own: but the legend of Sanctuary was a tale they had heard at their mothers’ knees, and roving the wide sea was in their blood. Even the steadiest man found the idea hard to resist. There were still a few places to be settled, if her father was to take a full crew, and she had yet to broach the subject with him again as to whether she would be one of them.

Aran grinned, a flash of white in the gloom. ‘Soon.’

‘How soon?’

‘A week or two.’

‘But the seas will be ice-locked all the way from Whale Holm—’

‘Why do you think I had an ice-breaker made for her? I cannot wait till Firstsun to set sail: others will get there first. Some may have set out already, every day she lies unlaunched is a wasted day, to me.’

‘What do you mean?’

He turned to her then and his face was set and grim. ‘I cannot kick my heels here, Katla: Rockfall holds nothing for me now.’

‘Da!’

‘My son is lost to me; my wife is going mad with grief, and I can do nothing to set the world aright. Why lie around in front of a choking peat-fire feeding a body that is ageing before my very eyes, waiting for death to claim me a little more each day in hand-measure after hand-measure?’

‘So you will go out into the Northern Ocean in the depths of winter and offer yourself wholesale, like a calf to the slaughter? That will hardly make the world aright.’

‘If I stay here I, too, will go mad.’

Katla bit her lip to stop herself saying what she truly thought: that the Master of Rockfall might already have turned that corner. But while her head told her his plan was at best folly and at worst wilful idiocy, her heart began to beat faster and the palms of her hands itched as if with incipient sweat, though the night was chill. It was the sensation she often felt before attempting a climb she had been assessing for days. The memory of the voice she had heard, urging her to stay behind, she pushed firmly away, locked it into the small box at the back of her mind where she kept all the doubts and fears and other extraneous matters that tried to assail her as she was making the first move off the ground.

‘There is nothing for me here, either, Da. Take me with you. I can row, and free rigging and help the navigation. I am as strong as many a man, and you know I will utter no complaint in even the harshest of conditions. What good am I here, under Ma’s feet? She looks at me with reproach, no matter what I do. I cannot cook, or sew or spin or weave or behave in the way she wants me to. I want no husband, and I have lost as much as you; let me come with you.’

Aran Aranson gazed at his daughter and saw how in the fey light her face shone with fervour. She was so like him it hurt. His eyes began to prickle and he looked quickly aside. ‘I cannot. Your mother would never forgive me if she were to lose another of her children to the sea.’

‘And what about Fent?’

‘I have promised him a place.’

Katla was incensed. ‘But that’s not fair! Why can Fent be risked, and not me? Take me instead of him: you know I am of more use!’

‘I have my reasons.’ In his mind he saw Festrin One-Eye berating him, telling him to look well to his daughter. He would never admit it to any living soul, but the idea of the seither returning to Rockfall made his stomach turn over; made the hairs on the back of his neck rise like a wary dog’s. Besides, Katla had already disobeyed him once in the matter of seagoing expeditions: she would not play that game twice. And Fent was becoming a liability at home with nothing to absorb his increasingly destructive energies. There would be more than one girl bearing red-haired children come the following summer, and they would all have to be provided for. ‘My mind is made up in this, Katla, so do not try to wheedle around me, nor think to trick your way aboard. I am not so amenable as Tam Fox: I’d not have hesitated for a moment in putting you over the side.’

The mention of the mummer chief’s name filled Katla with a sudden overwhelming despair. If even a man so vital and strong as Tam Fox could be taken by the seas, what chance did any other stand? She found herself staring at the
Long Serpent
with fresh eyes. It was beautiful, but deadly, a slender twig of wood to be tossed at will by waves and storm. Did she really want to cling to its slim gunwales while the wind howled around her ears and pelted her with ice shards and freezing spume?

But in her heart she knew the answer to this question.

No matter what the consequences; yes, yes, yes.

For the next few days, Katla kept out of her father’s way. She could not afford for him to become aware of how his own obsession had gripped her. She had the conviction that if he were to look into her face he would see her thoughts burning there and lock her away in one of the outhouses till the
Long Serpent
had sailed out of the sound. Meanwhile, Aran and his wife had broken their long silence; first with a furious argument, then with tears and softer words, but no matter how brave a face Bera turned to the world, Katla could see the fear in her mother’s eyes that having lost her beloved Halli, she would soon lose the man she had borne him to, and most likely Fent as well.

Word of the imminence of the voyage spread across the island. The men who had been chosen as crew expressed some surprise at such an early sailing, into the teeth of the storms and the embrace of the ice; but despite the grumbles, there was a palpable excitement in the air. Like the Master of Rockfall, they were bored with a Westman winter spent engaged in small chores and sleep: adventure called, and they would follow Aran Aranson anywhere he would take them.

The hall was buzzing with chatter and activity. The new sail was woven by day and night, and without the integration of any design, since the Master was in such a hurry. On the morning of its completion, the women took it out into the front enclosure and painted its leeward side with mutton-fat, to catch and hold the wind. The oars were oiled and polished, the better to glide through the water, and the loops of rope which would hold them in place inside the ship were treated with whale oil to keep them waterproofed and supple. The last of the caulking was carried out the next day so that the entire island seemed to reek of pine tar and wet wool. The following morning, the massive mastfish was installed, and the great mast stepped inside it and locked into place so that Morten Danson could be satisfied of the fit. Losing a mast to storm winds and a faulty setting was the simplest way to lose the vessel and every member of its crew; and while the shipmaker had no love for the man who had caused him to be abducted, or for any of the men who would sail with him, he was damned if he would see his reputation compromised. The sail was made fast to the yard and hauled up to billow in the biting onshore breeze. Katla watched, her fingers itching, as the tumbler, Jad, swarmed easily to the top of the mast to check the beads and knotting around the rakki and affixed the shrouds with nimble fingers.

The last of the oak logs which had been towed from the shipyard were laid all the way from the stempost down the crunching shingle to the lapping waves. The following day every able-bodied man on the island took a rope and a hand in rolling the ship down into the water, and there the
Long Serpent
was launched, into the sound at Rockfall. All across the strand men cheered: the launch of such a fine vessel was a sight to remember. The Master, Morten Danson and his foreman, Orm Flatnose, checked the lie of the ship, examined the seams – too loose and the ship would take in too much water; too tight and when the wood swelled, she would likely spring planking in a heavy sea – while a half dozen of the chosen crew hauled up the mast and raised the sail. Satisfied at last, they brought her to anchor alongside the
Fulmar’s Gift
. The
Serpent
was a bigger ship by far, and heavier in keel and belly to compensate for the weight of the ice-breaker; but she was by far the more elegant of the two vessels. By comparison, the
Fulmar’s Gift
looked what she was: an elderly ship constructed of inferior materials and for a less exalted purpose, lumpen and workaday, her wood blackened by age and scarred from impact with rock and reef and axe.

For three days, men rowed faerings in and out of the harbour to the
Long Serpent
, taking with them new buckets of luting to caulk between the strakes and tar for the seams, while Morten Danson and Orm, a man with hands like bear’s paws, all palm and muscle and stubby, powerful fingers, checked the working of the steerboard, fixed the rigging and argued about exactly how to set the under-yard. When all was done to their satisfaction, there followed the seachests and firewood, then the tanned hides, the sealskin bags and spars, to provide what little shelter could be had on the arctic seas; and lastly the provisions for the voyage. Chains of women and children lined the path from the steading to the shore, passing from hand to hand baskets of rye bread and salt cod, ling and saithe, blood sausages, pickled mutton and veal, wind-dried beef, a wheel of cheese, gulls’ eggs and chickens’ eggs; salted puffin and whole dried rabbits; an entire seal which had been soaked in brine. A multitude of heavy kegs containing water from the stream which ran directly off the mountains behind the great hall were stowed in the stern in a compartment the shipmaker had installed there to counterbalance the weight of the ice-breaker. A small amount of stallion’s blood followed, and a barrel of good beer. It would be good for the crew’s morale, Aran had decided, to be able to have a warming drink inside them after an exhausting day’s rowing.