Fallowblade (63 page)

That very afternoon a man in peasant garb arrived at High Darioneth. Alone, or seemingly alone, he entered through the East Gate, and ran, with a steady, enduring gait, all the way to Ellenhall. Quite a stir he caused, because he was the stranger whom rumour had described; the man of two aspects. Watchmen accompanied him, and although he would not tell them his name they did not hinder him, for there was something familiar in his voice, his bearing, his face . . .

By the time the newcomer reached the road leading up the cliff to Rowan Green a crowd had formed around him, chanting and singing. Children were skipping and shouting. They had recognised him at last. Tall and lithe was he, with a dark brown beard, and hair that rained across his shoulders and down his back. His eyes were as green as leaves.

News of his approach travelled ahead of him. The bells of Ellenhall began to chime in celebration. By the time the traveller arrived at the top of the road, Avalloc, Dristan and Asr
ă
thiel Maelstronnar were waiting. Their arms were extended wide, and the look of incredulous joy in their eyes was so moving that it was painful to behold. As the four, reunited, enfolded each other in a quadruple embrace, the old man wept.

Arran Maelstronnar had returned.

The newcomer was deeply affected by greeting his father, brother and daughter after the prolonged separation, and although he was clearly anxious to be reunited with Jewel he remained with them at the threshold of Rowan Green for a long while. The four were oblivious of the jostling throng that milled about them, remaining at a respectful distance but unable to keep their voices down.

‘It is he!’ the well-wishers jubilantly cried, ‘Arran has returned from the ends of the world! The Storm Lord’s son lives!’ More people were running up the road on the heels of the first crowd, and many clustered around Albiona—who was laughing and crying at the same time—and pelting her with questions, as if she were already an authority on every detail of Arran’s travels. Cavalon and Corisande, overwhelmed by the enormity of the event and the excitement of the onlookers, hung back with mouths agape.

For those at the centre of the maelstrom, time became meaningless. It might have flown, it might have stood still—they had no notion of it. The whole world might have suddenly become silent and blank for all they knew—the scope of their entire thought was filled with the presence of each other; they could not stop themselves from simply gazing and smiling. Arran’s relatives seemed unable to let go of him, as if he might vanish if they should lose their grasp, and he was in the same predicament. One minute Arran’s fingers dug into Dristan’s shoulder, next he grasped Avalloc’s hand with a grip of iron, but all the while he was enfolding Asr
ă
thiel beneath his arm as a pen folds her cygnet under her wing; holding her close against him, and she clinging to him as if she would never give him release; like a climbing rose clinging to the wall that supports it. Presently they found themselves murmuring questions and answers, but they hardly knew what they said or heard; nothing sank in, and it would all have to be repeated later. By degrees, Asr
ă
thiel recovered her senses sufficiently to take a second look at her father. Of course, he had not aged much, if at all, but she fancied she could see subtle changes that perhaps no one else would.

By then Dristan’s children were doing their best to squeeze themselves between their father and uncle, without success until at length Dristan noticed and drew aside to let them in. Looking up, Arran noticed Albiona amongst the onlookers, and beckoned her over. She fell upon his shoulders with a flurry of exclamations and he kissed her on both cheeks.

At last Arran said, gently disentangling himself from everyone’s warm embraces, ‘Is it still in the cupola, her sleeping place?’ and like a jolt it came home to Asr
ă
thiel that her father would not have returned if he did not bear with him some hope for her mother’s awakening.

‘She is there,’ Avalloc affirmed, whereupon Arran ran across the green and into the house ahead of them, heading straight upstairs to where Jewel lay asleep. Albiona hastened to position herself at the front door, where she endeavoured to impose some sort of order on the steadily growing deluge of joyous friends and acquaintances, while the rest of the family followed in Arran’s wake. When they had assembled around Jewel’s couch, amongst the wildflowers, they watched him lean down and kiss his wife, then draw back.

Only then, as he gazed lovingly at her flawless face, Arran hesitated.

‘Jewel,’ he murmured, ‘can I awaken you?’

‘Is it possible?’ exclaimed Asr
ă
thiel. ‘Father, have you found a cure?’ It was too much to hope for, too much to comprehend. She felt excited, terrified and amazed. Suddenly light-headed, the damsel leaned on her Uncle Dristan for support.

‘I do not know for certain, my darling,’ said Arran. ‘If it is not a cure, then all my labours and travails these past years have been for naught.’ He made to take something from a pocket in his tunic, but thought better of it. ‘Now that the moment of proof is at hand I find I am reluctant to try my remedies, for they are the last hope. If they fail, all is lost forever.’ Sweat beaded Arran’s brow, and he was trembling.

‘My dear boy, let us bring you refreshment,’ said the Storm Lord.

‘Gramercy but no, Father. I have vowed that once I entered this house I would neither eat nor drink until I had tried to waken Jewel.’

‘Bide awhile and compose yourself,’ the sage Clementer advised gently. ‘Jewel has waited all these years. She will wait a few moments more.’

‘You are right.’ Arran sat down at his wife’s bedside, never taking his eyes from her face, with his daughter sitting close beside him, holding his hand. Tiny hands parted the strands of Arran’s hair that fell across his shoulders, and a pair of eyes the size of cucumber seeds peered out.

‘Hello, Fridayweed!’ Asr
ă
thiel said to the impet, who was sitting next to her father’s ear. ‘I am glad to see you.’

The little wight bowed politely. Avalloc rested his hand on his son’s shoulder and, clasping Asr
ă
thiel’s hand more tightly in his, Arran began to speak.

‘There is no single straightforward remedy for such a unique and complicated malaise, this endless sleep,’ he said, ‘caused as it is by poison and flawed sorcery. I searched long and hard to ensure I had explored every possible avenue. My path to the truth was beset by impasses and swindles, false leads and useless clues, but eventually I happened upon three—nay, four treatments that held promise; one for the flesh, one for the breath and one for the blood. One also for the spirit, and that is the simplest and most powerful of all. Together they may have efficacy.’

‘They will work!’ cried Asr
ă
thiel. ‘I know they will!’ She directed an agonised glance at her grandfather. Avalloc attempted to smile reassuringly, but could not conceal his doubt.

A second time Arran made to remove something from his pocket and a second time he stopped short. ‘Let me dwell in hope a short while longer,’ he said. ‘I will tell you the story of my wanderings, and at the end of it I will try the remedies. Ah, Jewel, can I waken you?’

Then he told his father and daughter a tale of a deserted coast where gulls swooped in changing skies, where serried lines of foaming waves rolled in to crash upon the rocks, spreading out to become white lace edgings that fizzed as they drew back into the ocean. Curly shells littered the beach, mingled with strands of brown bull-kelp, and tiny uncut gems, blue and green; jewels of the sea. Silvery leafed saltbush clung to crevices in the cliffs. It had taken a year to reach this shore.

In the morning, at low tide, Arran rose from his sleeping place in the dunes and picked his way amongst the rock formations along the low-tide mark. He heard the sound of sobbing and, following it, entered an airy cave sea-scooped from a precipice. A mermaid lay there in a clear rock pool, her fish’s tail of shining, overlapping discs coiling through gardens of sea anemones and chains of seagrass, her pearly skin gleaming, her yard-long green hair sliding like wet paint around her strange face. She cried and moaned, talking in an outlandish language, but it became obvious to Arran that the reason for her lamentation was that she had been stranded when the tide went out.

Sailors told grim yarns about these cold-blooded wights but, unafraid, Arran lifted her in his arms and carried her down to the water’s edge. As soon as he touched her he discovered that he could understand her talk. When he laid her down gently in the foam she crowed with delight, saying, ‘Now I can return to my water kingdom and, man, thou mayst come with me! Never fear, for thou wouldst not drown; in sooth, thou canst not die, methinks. Come and be a king under the sea! Rule over a fair realm of exotic delights, pampered by concubines who are immortal, like thee. Never know sorrow or loss!’ But Arran would not accept the invitation, though she asked three times. ‘Very well,’ said the sea-girl, ‘Instead I will give thee a gift in return for thy kind deed. What wouldst thou like?’

He said, ‘A cure. A cure for my wife, who sleeps in a coma.’

With a splash the mermaid darted away. Arran waited, but when she did not return he thought that was the last he had seen of her. Just as he was about to walk away she reappeared, gliding in to shore on the next great comber, and tossed him a glass phial containing a green substance.

‘This is
cneadhìoc
, wound-heal—a poultice made from a rare seaweed that doth grow on a single seashore,’ she told him. ‘It will not cure all things, but it will heal any wound and draw out any splinter. Once long ago,’ she said, ‘I gave another gift to a human being, and it was a shirt of fishes’ mail.’ Then, with a flick of her iridescent tail, the grateful mermaid was gone.

‘What use is a drawer-out of splinters?’ Fridayweed grumbled softly from beneath his ear. ‘What profit is there in healing the wounds of one who cannot be wakened?’

Ignoring the wight, Arran spoke next of discovering a land of ice and snow so cold he named it ‘Midwinter’. For years he had travelled along the coast to find this country, because he had overheard a band of spriggans talking about certain ancient bubbles of air trapped in ice and guarded by frost elves. These airs, the spriggans said, being from a time when the world was new-birthed and pure, sometimes possessed phenomenal properties.

Warmly wrapped in rags that he had bartered from trows along the way, Arran eventually arrived at a region that jutted into polar seas; a peninsula whose hilly spine resembled, in his hungry opinion, a row of gigantic puddings dripping with white sauce and dusted with sugar. In these latitudes the wind was piercing; the cold penetrated to the deepest recess of mind and body. The wind, with its millions of little knives, scraped away the clouds. From clear skies, stars as brilliant as cut jewels shone down upon the landscape, creating a shimmering twilight. Like glass rods breaking, the air cracked and snapped.

The weathermage had reached the summit of a ridge above the shore when he encountered the first snow troll he had ever seen in his life; a great, hairy fellow some seven or eight feet high, with skin like brownstone, all gnarled and whorled with warts, an outlandishly long nose, jutting brows like snowy cliffs and sad eyes that drooped down at the outer corners. He was clad in a robe of white hides, dripping with icicles, and carried a knopped club. The most astonishing thing about him was his headgear, for he wore a kind of coronet that appeared to be made from shifting radiance of many hues, in threads and banners, as if fashioned from the northern lights. The wight challenged the weathermaster, accusing him of trespass, but Arran protested that he was just a peaceful traveller passing through.

‘Toll you pay,’ grunted the troll, eyeing the weathermage from beneath beetling brows.

‘What shall I pay you with?’

‘Coin.’

‘I have no money.’

‘Food.’

‘I have no provisions. I have nothing I can give you as toll price, unless you’ll accept a song.’

‘Blood,’ said the troll, and it rushed at Arran.

Arran carried no weapon save weathermastery and his own wits. He fought the troll, there in the snow, and the wight was as strong as an avalanche, but Arran was fast. Notwithstanding, the impetus of an avalanche is formidable, and the weather-master was making heavy work of it when the impet Fridayweed popped out of Arran’s pocket and jumped across to his antagonist’s shoulder. While the slow-witted troll was twisting its knotty boulder of a head to see what was shrieking in its ear, Arran seized the opportunity to trip the creature up and push it off balance. Down the hill tumbled the troll, gathering layers of fleecy mantle, becoming a massive snowball. It rolled down to the foot of the slope and into the sea with a tremendous splash.

‘Oh well done, Fridayweed!’ Avalloc said approvingly at this point in the story, and Asr
ă
thiel applauded.

Arran did not wait to see how the wight fared in the ocean with the chunks of brash ice floating and clashing about its lugs, but hastened on his way. Before he passed out of earshot he thought he heard a deep voice shout out, ‘Stora Snötrollet you pass, but reck-you Ice Goblins!’

‘Ice Goblins!’ exclaimed Asr
ă
thiel, squeezing her father’s hand. ‘I have heard some talk of them.’ With a pang of desolate longing she pictured the Argenkindë riding across a wintry landscape to rendezvous with their long-lost kindred. ‘But pray, go on,’ she added quickly, banishing the vision.

That night the entire sky became congested with dark and heavy cloud. As Arran plodded through thick drifts he looked up and saw, atop a hummock and outlined against the lowering sky, a pinnacled, throne-like chair carved from a solid block of white ice. Snow had fallen on it, and clung in glistening masses here and there. Seated on this extraordinary piece of furniture was a slim youth clad in shimmering raiment and adorned with sharp diamonds. At his feet sat an arctic wolf and a snow goose. The weathermage guessed at once that this was one of the frost elves of whom the spriggans had spoken, for the youth wore a spiky coronet of icicles, and all his diamonds were, on closer inspection, ice crystals. He was like no other being Arran had ever beheld, with his angular cheekbones, sharply pointed nose, and thin, pale lips. His eyes were the same eerie shade of blue as the bergs the weathermaster had seen floating in polar seas; pieces shorn off the feet of mountain glaciers, once pressed beneath stupendous weight, from which all trapped air had been expelled, so that they took on the luminous blueness of tropical twilight. The elf’s skin was like rime; white with a faint sheen. Clouds of miniature eye-stabbing lights hovered around him like prisms of moonlight.