Talus and the Frozen King (2 page)

'I don't think there's any point in going on,' Bran said. 'The journey gets harder each day. I think ...the time has come to end it.'

Talus faced him, his face unreadable, saying nothing. 'We don't even know if it's possible to get where we're going,' Bran went on. 'And even if it is, what will we find there? What if the old tales are ... well, just tales?'

Talus continued to say nothing.

'What if there's nothing in the north at all?'

Still no response.

Confounded by his friend's silence, Bran looked out to sea again. 'We haven't seen the northlight for six whole moons now,' he said. 'We followed it all this way but now it's abandoned us.

We were wrong. I was wrong. If you want to go on, that's all right, but I ...'

Talus drew himself up to his full height. He smoothed his hand over his bald head. He was looking past Bran, for some reason unable to meet his friend's eye.

'Are you trying to say goodbye, Bran?'

Bran pressed the heel of his good hand against his eyes. He would not cry.

'Two years,' he said, substituting grief for anger. 'I've followed you on this cursed trail for two whole years. Well, now the trail's gone cold. You go on if you want, but I'm going back. I'm going home, Talus. I can't follow you any more.'

Three long strides brought Talus close. He was smiling. He put his bony hands on Bran's shoulders. Still he was looking not at his companion but past him.

'Bran,' he said. 'Don't you know it is I who am following you?'

Bran's tears turned slowly to crystals of ice. 'You can't even look me in the eye,' he said.

'Why would I,' said Talus, 'when I can look at that?' He turned Bran round to face the ocean.

There was unexpected strength in those scrawny arms.

Bran gasped. Something was happening in the pre-dawn sky. Something glorious. Green streamers were rising from the northern horizon. The streamers expanded, became vast glowing rivers of light. The light was in constant motion, like flowing liquid. Its colour shifted from green to blue to orange to red.

It came towards them. There were moving images inside the light: a string of women dancing in line, a shoal of iridescent fish, an eye, a skein of blood, beads of silver dew or sweat, a burning horse. The pictures formed and flowed and melted away, always changing, never still. Were they spirits or dreams? It didn't matter.

The shining parade rolled ever nearer, giddy in its ever-changing round. Now it was vast, all-encompassing. It poured past the little island and exploded over the cliff, over Bran's head. It met the mountains and dwarfed them. It was unearthly and welcome and entirely wonderful.

'The northlight,' Bran murmured. 'It's back.'

The ache had gone from his hand, and from his head. Even from his heart. He still felt exhausted. But the coldness of the air, suddenly, was exhilarating.

'It's beautiful,' he said.

'It always was,' said Talus.

The sea continued to breathe below them, in and out, caressing the shore. Above them flowed another ocean: an ocean of light. Its power rained down on Bran, filling him from his toes to the crown of his head. Suddenly anything was possible.

Talus handed Bran his pack. 'Do you still wish to say goodbye?'

Already the eerie light was fading, washed away by the dawn that had started to creep over the mountains. Such fleeting magic. Bran didn't care. He'd seen it again. The northlight had returned.

'Is it true what they say, Talus? That love survives death?'

The last traces of the northlight danced in Talus's eyes.

'On the night we first met, Bran, you did me a great service, at enormous cost to yourself. In return, I promised to show you a sight no man has seen, to tell you a story no man has heard, to set you walking on a path no man has trod. A path, perhaps, that will lead you to the peace you crave. It is a promise I intend to keep. And so I ask you again: do you still wish to say goodbye?'

The last shreds of the northlight vanished into the brightening sky. Pale pink tendrils twisted briefly, making a shape that might have been a ghostly face, a phantom hand: a woman, beckoning. Bran hefted his pack on to his shoulder. 'I suppose I could go a little further. But, Talus, what do we do when we run out of land?'

Talus clapped him on the back.

'Why, Bran, isn't it obvious? We find ourselves a boat! Now, shall we see what all that screaming is about?'

As they followed the narrow track down the cliff towards the shore, the sky to the east turned livid red. Once, when he looked that way, Bran thought he saw a figure standing on a ridgetop, silhouetted against the dawn, watching them.

But he couldn't be sure.

By the time they reached the shore, the rising sun had appeared through a cleft in the mountains.

The sky was livid red. Restless waves stroked the coarse grey shingle of the beach. Bran stood at the water's edge, his shadow fleeing from his feet and over the choppy sea.

The tide had ebbed enough to reveal a weed-strewn path extending through the shallows all the way to the island: Talus's causeway. It was made of six-sided stones, dark like slate. Bran had never seen anything like it before.

'Did they make this?' he said, momentarily distracted from the screaming and wailing that still filled the morning air.

'No man made this,' said Talus.

'You're sure about going over there?'

'We might help. And, perhaps, they might help us.'

Talus stepped out on to the peculiar stone path. The receding tide had left it wet and glossy.

He walked fast, as he always did. Following carefully over the strange and slippery stones, Bran considered his options. Seeing the northlight again had energised him. Yet his sadness remained. His heart simply wasn't in this any more.

Torn by indecision, he asked himself a simple question: what would Keyli have done?

Well, he knew the answer to that. Keyli would have investigated. In life, her curiosity would have been a match even for Talus's. She would have wanted to know what was going on here.

One more day, then. He would give Talus one day on this wretched island. Then he'd make up his mind, once and for all.

Bran's moccasins skidded on a patch of seaweed. Talus caught him before he could fall. Bran nodded his thanks and they moved on.

A pair of totems awaited them on the island's snow-dusted shingle beach: disembodied faces standing each as tall as Bran. They were slick with ice. Their jaws gaped. In their necks, stone tendons bulged. They were clearly the work of a skilled craftsman. Possibly a deranged one. Talus had been right. As usual.

Bran kept his head lowered and his eyes averted as they passed between the monolithic statues. The last thing he wanted to do was offend the island's ancestor spirits. He muttered an incantation to Mir, the father of the sea. Unlike the inhabitants of the totems, Mir was at least a living presence in the world. These days, Bran didn't much care for the dead.

As always, Talus walked with his head high.

The defensive maze they'd seen from the cliff took the form of a network of trenches cut into the island's peaty soil. Rough stone walls kept the soil from spilling on to the paths although, at this time of year, the earth was frozen solid.

They marched through the snow, Talus leading the way.

'We'll get lost,' said Bran. He tried to peer over the walls of the maze, but they reached above his head. The yawning faces of the totems had unnerved him. It was one whole turn of the moon since they'd last taken shelter in such a place and he was getting used to the solitary life.

'That is impossible,' Talus replied. 'I can already see the pattern of the maze. It is a simple one.'

'If you say so.'

Talus chose turns seemingly at random. Bran followed, knowing better than to offer suggestions. The wailing grew steadily louder. Bran grew steadily more unhappy.

The way narrowed, the turns tightened. Bran was convinced Talus was leading them down a dead end. Surely now they must turn back.

He was about to tap Talus's shoulder when, without warning, the maze spun them round and ejected them into a wide arena.

Like the trenches, this open space was sunken and lined with stone. At the far end, a low passage led—Bran guessed—into the village itself. Numerous totems were spaced evenly around the arena's circular perimeter, some twice the height of a man. At least these characters had their mouths closed. Overhead, the red sky was laced with orange.

A crowd had gathered in the arena. Most wore thick furs; a few wore simple skins, layered against the cold. Many of the men held spears with stone tips. Their cheeks were purple in the cold.

All looked grim. The women knelt in a ring around a seated man. It was the women who were wailing.

Nobody seemed to notice their arrival. All attention was on the man on the ground. Like Bran, he was big, red-bearded. He was also naked. Like the totems, his bare skin was rimed with ice.

Around his head was a simple circlet of woven willow twigs. He was utterly still.

Bran felt an almost overwhelming urge to run away.

'Talus!' he hissed. 'I really think we should ...'

'You!' A man stepped out of the crowd. The wailing of the women stopped abruptly.

The man stood as tall as Talus; the deer-skull strapped to his head made him taller still. Eagle feathers adorned its giant antlers. Animal teeth rattled on a leather thong around his neck. His face was caked with blue paint, striped with yellow, reducing his features to an abstract pattern. He walked with a slight limp, aided by a long staff dressed with jangling shells.

He glanced at Bran. He stared at Talus.

'I am Mishina,' he said at last. 'I am shaman. Who are you?'

Talus sank to his knees and opened his robe. Unlike Bran's simple bearskin, Talus's clothing was a random patchwork of different animal hides: rabbit, seal, even wolf. Some weren't familiar to Bran at all.

Exposed to the cold air, Talus's bare chest rapidly took on the appearance of a plucked fowl, but he held firm without shivering.

'We come without weapons,' he said, 'in only our skins.'

Bran—who liked magic-men about as much as he liked totems—just glared.

'Without weapons?' said Mishina. 'Your friend carries an axe.'

'To make a fire, a man must cut wood,' Talus replied. 'We ask only to share words with you, and perhaps a little food.' He stood, wrapping his robe around his thin body again. 'And to offer what help we can. You have troubles.'

'Stay where you are,' the shaman said. He tossed his head. The antlers turned the gesture into a challenge. 'Say nothing. Do nothing.'

Talus dipped his head. 'As you wish.'

Meanwhile, several young men had pushed their way into the circle of women and were trying to lift the seated man. But he was heavy, and their fingers slipped on his icy skin. Bran wondered why the man wasn't able to stand himself. What kind of fool chose to sit unclothed in the snow in weather like this?

One particularly brawny character managed to wedge his hands under the man's thighs. He gave a grunt and lifted. At the same time, someone on the other side pushed and the brawny man lost his grip. The seated man—who'd rocked momentarily on to one haunch—fell back to earth. He hit the ground with unexpected solidity and at last Bran realised what it was they'd stumbled upon, and scolded himself for not having seen the obvious at once.

The man in the snow was dead.

More men crowded round the corpse, practically fighting each other in their efforts to raise it up.

The women started wailing again. The scene descended into absurdity. At last the shaman called a halt. He spoke quietly to one of the observers – a stocky man with thick sandy hair – who ran into the village. Moments later the man returned dragging a litter woven from branches.

The women shuffled aside, still on their knees. They'd fallen quiet again, though several were now tearing their hair. With some effort, the men managed to slide the frozen corpse on to the litter. Its flesh was as unyielding as stone. When the body was finally in place, Mishina thumped his staff on the icy ground. 'Hashath has left this living land,' he cried. 'Our warrior-king hunts now with his fathers in the afterdream.'

The sandy-haired man clamped his arms across his chest. His face worked with emotion.

'I have run with the spirits,' the shaman went on. 'The spirits say that Hashath was tired of this world. They say that he knew his time had come. That he shed his clothes and walked into the night. That he gave his body to the ice. The spirits tell us now to honour the will of Hashath, and set the next warrior-king on his path.'

The men were nodding, and grunting agreement. The women began a slow, soft chanting.

The men bent to the litter.

Talus coughed and stepped forward. Bran tried to grab him, but his crippled fingers slipped through his friend's robe.

'Whatever you're going to do, Talus,' he hissed, 'don't do it.'

'Forgive me for saying so,' said Talus to the shaman, 'but I think your spirits may be wrong.'

Mishina whirled round, his grip tightening on his staff. The bones around his neck rattled.

The thick paint on his face made his expression impossible to read, but Bran guessed that Talus had made the shaman angry. He sympathised. Talus did that to people a lot.

Five enormous strides carried Talus into the middle of the throng. The women shuffled aside to give him room; even some of the men fell back. Bran had seen this before: Talus looked frail, but there was something in his manner that could part crowds quicker than a charging boar. Bran's trepidation dissolved into a kind of fascinated pride.

The shaman was unimpressed by Talus's boldness. 'Back!' He raised his staff.

'Before you strike me,' said Talus, lifting his hands in placation, 'let me share my thoughts with you. They concern your king. You would do well to hear them.'

'You are a gull-of-the-storm in the guise of a man!' Cracked paint showered from Mishina's cheeks. He swung his staff – the tip of which was studded with flint shards – straight at Talus's head.