Talus and the Frozen King (7 page)

'An interesting structure,' said Talus.

'Rawhide ties carry the weight of the bone back to heavy stones set deep in the ground,' said Gantor.

'You speak with great knowledge.'

'I built it.'

The arena was packed with people; it looked as if the entire village had turned out. Gantor's hanging canopy protected only the arena's outer edge, so the centre lay exposed beneath what was effectively a gigantic smoke hole. With the storm gathering, Talus questioned the wisdom of holding a meeting here tonight. But beneath the hole in the roof was one of the biggest fires he'd ever seen.

Flames rose from an enormous stack of driftwood. Their heat created a rippling barrier that repelled the worst of the weather. Gantor led them to a spot near the fire. The heat scorched Talus's face. He didn't care. Fire was always welcome, especially during a winter such as this.

They sat on mats woven from reeds between groups of people they didn't know and who regarded them with naked fascination. Gantor sat beside Talus and said nothing.

A woman moved through the crowd carrying a large dish of hollowed bark. Smaller dishes clattered on a leather thong around her neck. As she drew nearer, Talus recognised her as the woman who'd served them broth in the king's house.

When she reached Gantor, the woman plucked three of the small dishes free and filled them with broth from the bigger one. As she turned to leave, she threw Talus a shy smile.

Gantor handed round the dishes. Talus sniffed his: more stew-of-the-sea. He sipped, tasting clams and herbs and something smoky.

'They're burning wood,' Bran said as he tucked into his stew. 'How can they afford to do that?' In this cold and remote land, wood was a precious commodity, more prized for building than burning.

'They do it to honour their king.' Talus continued taking sips from his bowl. Bran had already emptied his. Was his appetite never satisfied?

An exploding knot of wood sent a ribbon of sparks up into the night. The sparks mingled briefly with the swirling snowflakes before the wind whipped them away.

'Do you really think I'm going to be able to sneak away?' Bran pitched his voice low. 'And what if there's a guard on the cairn?'

'There will be no guard. Everyone is here. Nor will there will be any need for you to sneak:

Tharn's opinion of us has already changed.'

'Oh, really? What makes you think that?'

'Did you see the face of the woman who brought the food?'

'I did. It was a pretty face.'

'Bran—you are so easily distracted.' Another knot cracked in the fire. A man emerged from the crowd to stand before the flames:

Tharn. He was dressed in a long robe of dark leather, densely patterned with orange stitches. Beside him stood Mishina, whose face was now painted an unbroken yellow. It bothered Talus that he still couldn't make out the shaman's features.

'Welcome to you, Creyak!' Tharn cried. His rumbling voice was more than a match for the wind.

The crowd murmured in response.

'Your king, Hashath, has joined the ancestors in the afterdream!'

Another murmur.

'Before I place my feet in the tracks my father made, we must say our farewells according to the ways of Creyak.' Tharn glanced at Mishina, who nodded. 'But first there is a wrong to be righted.'

Tharn made his way through the crowd. Heads turned to track his progress ... all the way up to where Talus and Bran were seated. When Tharn stopped, the heads stopped too. Now the entire village was staring at them. Bran squirmed uneasily. Talus waited for Tharn to speak.

'Talus—with your strange ways, you have seeded in me an equally strange idea: that the man who killed my father may somehow be brought to ... I cannot think of the word to use.'

'The word does not exist,' Talus replied. 'But the idea does. If what you wish is for this man to answer the questions his actions have raised, then yes, I wish it too.'

'To answer.' Tharn 'Yes, that will do. But before we can do this, I must put things right between us.'

Bran threw Talus a quizzical look.

'Here in Creyak, we do not trust strangers. Strangers who come in the midst of death are doubly dangerous. However, this afternoon I have learned something new. A woman of our village - her name is Lethriel—was out gathering herbs on the glen just before dawn. She watched you descend from the cliffs. So I know you were not in Creyak last night.'

'I thought I saw someone out there!' said Bran. 'Let him finish, Bran, said Talus. 'Tharn—what do you say this means?'

'It means you were not on this island when the king died. You did not kill him.'

The woman who'd served them was by now heading for the opposite side of the fire. As Tharn spoke she smiled their way, and Talus had no doubt this was the woman called Lethriel. The herbs in the stew were probably the very ones she'd been collecting that morning.

'I saw her,' Bran said again. 'I knew it.'

Tharn knelt. He placed his hand first on Bran's shaggy head, then on Talus's hairless one.

'Our food and fire are yours,' he said. 'You are welcome in Creyak. But we expect a reward for our hospitality.'

'Name it,' said Talus, knowing exactly what was coming.

'A story,' said Tharn. 'Tell us a tale, bard. Make it about life and death, because that is what concerns us here tonight.'

With that, he stepped away, returning to the core of his family and leaving Talus and Bran to face the crowd.

'Leave this to me,' said Talus.

'I intend to,' said Bran.

Talus looked out over the sea of faces. Lightning flashed above the smoke hole, reflecting off several hundred pairs of eyes: eyes that were looking only at him. Somewhere among them was the killer.

He wondered briefly which story he would tell. Would it be an old one, or a new one that came to him even as he spoke it? He wouldn't know until he opened his mouth.

'Once, a boy dreamed his father was dead --' an old story, then; that was just fine '-- and the dream was so real that the boy thought it was true. He became so sad that he ran away from his village. The boy ran for many days, all the way out of this world and into the next. There he found a lake. It was night and the water was black.

'Soon, a giant rose up from the water of the lake, but he was not wet. He was bigger than a thousand men, and he wore the feathers of a thousand different hawks. Many ordinary men and women gathered at the lakeside to honour him.

'The giant raised his arms and turned around many times, but he did not grow dizzy. When he stopped, his left side was facing his people. They waded into the water and swarmed over him and tore off his feathers, revealing a dreadful bloody mass of bones and meat beneath. The land turned as black as the lake water and the giant said, "This is a night of death." And, across many worlds, many thousands died.

'The boy was terrified, so he hid all through the following day until the next night. As soon as it was dark, the giant emerged from the water again. Again he turned around many times, but this time he stopped with his right side facing his people. They tore off his feathers, this time revealing a naked body shining with glossy brown skin. The moon blazed and turned the land to silver, and the giant said, "This is a night of life." And, across many worlds, many thousands were born.

'The boy ran home and found his father was not dead after all, but alive. He embraced him, but he did not tell him what he had seen. That night, when he went to sleep, he feared he would have the same bad dream. But he did not. Nor did he ever dream of death again, throughout all his long life.'

When Talus's words had trailed away into the night, Mishina rapped his staff sharply on the ground, three times. The villagers responded by thumping their heels. Acknowledging the applause with a low bow, Talus seated himself once more at Bran's side.

'Later, when the singing has begun,' he murmured, 'pretend the food has curdled your stomach. We will say you have retired to the house. They trust us now. You will not be followed. Are you sure you are ready to do this?'

Before Bran could answer, someone landed beside them in a cloud of dust. It was Arak, the youngest of the king's sons. His arrival coincided with another flash of lightning, much brighter than the last. Two breaths later, thunder boomed.

Arak reached over Bran and grabbed Talus's clean hand with his grimy one.

'That was a wonderful story!' The lad's eyes were shining. His whole face glowed in the firelight. Then his expression fell. 'Is that really how death comes?'

Talus pushed Arak's hand gently away. 'It is just a story,' he said.

Arak shuffled his buttocks on the hard ground. He scratched the back of his neck. Presently, he spoke again.

'I don't know what to do.' He looked across to where his brothers were feasting. 'None of us do. Can you make it right?'

'I will do what I can,' said Talus. 'But only if the king-to-be wills it.'

'Tharn will look after us. He always does. It's the way of Creyak that he should be king now.

Nothing can stop that.'

Arak continued to fidget. His eyes continued to rove. He looked lost.

'There is a reason for everything,' said Talus. 'Even death.'

'Death comes for a reason?' said Arak.

'I believe so.'

'It's hard to believe it.'

'Yes, it is.'

'Death brings more than just grief,' said Bran. 'It brings a need to know the truth. A need to close ... Talus, how did you describe it to me?'

'To close the past,' said the bard.

'Closing,' murmured Arak.

'Knowing the truth closes the door that lets in the darkness,' said Talus. 'This is something time has taught me. It is why I do what I do.'

'And what's that?'

'I find truth where there appears to be none.'

'So ... you will help?' said Arak. 'You will work to make this right? To make this man answer for what he has done?'

'I will work to uncover the truth. If that is what you consider to be "right", then the answer to your question is yes.'

Arak leaped to his feet, suddenly grinning. 'That's all I wanted to know!'

With that, he ran off into the throng.

'Poor boy,' said Bran. 'He's lost.'

'Death brings trials, Bran. You know that.'

Despite the blazing heat of the fire, Bran shivered. 'Yes,' he said, 'I do.'

As the evening went on, fermented drinks were passed around and the proceedings grew increasingly unruly. At a wink from Talus, Bran started groaning and rubbing his belly. Tharn's change of heart meant he no longer needed a guard so nobody protested when he made his excuses and retired from the arena.

He went straight to the cairn.

Talus had already taken great delight in explaining to Bran about the cairn's design.

'It is cunningly built,' the bard had said. 'Its walls shape any sounds that are made inside it.

Imagine! A simple footstep becomes the grunt of a sleeping giant. A single human voice swells up until it becomes the roar of an angry mob.'

Well, that explained how Mishina, simply by banging his staff on the the floor, had set up that unnerving barrage of echoes. Bran consoled himself that at least this time he'd be alone. He would move carefully, making no sound. That way, the cairn would remain silent.

He was wrong.

As soon as he reached the shelter of the entrance stoop, Bran heard it: an immense, liquid moaning.

The sound was so deep in pitch it was scarcely sound at all. It flowed out of the cairn like thick tar.

When the wind gusted, it grew immeasurably louder.

Bran quickly decided the wind was the cause of it: the air moving past the mouth of the cairn made a hooting sound, like a hunter blowing air across his cupped hands to mimic the call of an owl.

It was a deduction worthy of Talus himself.

It didn't make Bran feel any less terrified.

He loitered outside the entrance. If he was going to run away, now was the time to do it. Everyone was busy at the feast; the rest of the village was deserted. Bran was confident he could find his way back through the maze. He'd even worked out that the tide would be low enough for him to cross back over the causeway.

But that would mean letting Talus down.

Did that matter, when he was planning to leave his friend anyway?

He continued to dither until eventually someone spoke in his head. It was a voice that came to him occasionally, usually in times of great trial when the weight of the world seemed to press down hard on his tired bones.

It was Keyli's voice.

'Stay, Bran,' she said. 'You can't leave him without saying goodbye.'

Bran set courage against fear and stepped inside the cairn.

Here the sound was a hundred times worse. The curved walls scooped up the drone of the wind, amplified and twisted it, gave it words where before it had none. Made it a dire song. The roar of the gale was an ocean through which swam the voices of the dead.

Bran shuddered. He shook snow from his bearskin and peered into the gloom. The light was terrible. The bright moon had guided him this far; now he was practically blind.

Slowly, shapes materialised: the regular uprights of the stone stalls; the mounds of desiccated bones; the slumped mountain that was the dead king's slowly thawing body. The tiny door Talus had sent him here to open looked very far away.

Thunder boomed outside. The cairn swallowed the sound whole, compressed it, smashed it against the sides of Bran's head. He dropped to his knees, pressed his hands to his ears. The thunder became the war-cry of an army of wrathful ghosts.

'No!' Bran shouted into the darkness.

The cairn ripped his one word into a thousand pieces. He was drowning in echoes.

No no no!

The sound intensified. Thunder crashed again and again. The storm had eaten him. Bran pinched his eyes shut and tried to wish the noise away.

'Please stop!' he shouted.

Stop stop stop!

The floor shifted beneath him, trying to tip him over. The air grew thick, wrapped itself around him like a tongue and squeezed. The ceiling descended. He couldn't breathe. He could barely think.