The Dragon Book (54 page)

I spend my days on the Spindlestone now, where I think often on a passage the fat priest in the little chapel used to cite to us: “The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the sons.”

I always hated those lines, thinking it deeply unfair that God would punish children for the actions of their parents. But now, finally, I think I understand. The verse does not speak of what God will do, but rather of how the world works. For when you do evil, when you create pain, at the same time you create an enemy. And not just one enemy; you make an enemy of all those who loved the one to whom you gave the pain.

Our father did evil, and Wynde and I suffered for it.

But perhaps it can end here. My stepmother, having healed my brother’s face, now acts as his advisor. Though Wynde will remain childless, young William has been declared the heir. So there will be no fight when Wynde has passed on.

As for me?

Well, I am the guardian of my country.

I watch the shores.

I watch the hills and forests.

I protect us from invasion.

But that is the least of what I do. For I also
listen
. I listen to the people who bring me news. I listen to what is happening.

That is the reason I stay here, wound round the Spindlestone, staring out to sea, but now and then turning my head to look behind, at the land I love.

I am the guardian of my country.

And we will do no more evil while I yet live.

Tanith Lee is one of the best known and most prolific of modern fantasists, with more than a hundred books to her credit, including (among many others)
The Birthgrave, Drinking Sapphire Wine, Don’t Bite the Sun, Night’s Master, The Storm Lord, Sung in Shadow, Volkhavaar, Anackire, Night’s Sorceries, Black Unicorn, Days of Grass, The Blood of Roses, Vivia, Reigning Cats and Dogs, When the Lights Go Out, Elephantasm, The Gods Are Thirsty, Cast a Bright Shadow, Here in Cold Hell, Faces Under Water, White as Snow, Mortal Suns, Death of the Day, Metallic Love, No Flame but Mine, Piratica: Being a Daring Tale of a Singular Girl’s Adventure Upon the High Seas,
and a sequel to
Piratica,
called
Return to Parrot Island.
Her numerous short stories have been collected in
Red as Blood, Tamastara, The Gorgon and Other Beastly Tales, Dreams of Dark and Light, Nightshades,
and
Forests of the Night.
Her short story “The Gorgon” won her a World Fantasy Award in 1983, and her short story “Elle Est Trois, (La Mort)” won her another World Fantasy Award in 1984. Her most recent books are the four The Secret Books of Paradys and a new collection,
Tempting the Gods.
She lives with her husband in the South of England.

Here she takes us deep into a stark and bitter—and perhaps never-ending—winter, for a grim tale of an obsession that will persist until the last heartbeat—and perhaps beyond.

PART ONE

EVEN as they ran towards the village, Kulvok could hear the heartbeat. The nearer they came, the louder it grew; though he had been hearing it anyway since one sunpass earlier. Now it shook him, like a drum inside his own body. To a shaman such as he, the significance of this was horrible, and had he been a novice, he would have run in the other direction. But he was no longer a novice. There was no choice but to go on.

They had reached a long snow ridge fifty or sixty feet high. Here the leader, Nenkru, halted his men.

The midday sun was low at this season. The valley beneath spread like a blue apron of ice, quite featureless, and, as expected, the village could no longer be seen. Things were always like this when they followed Ulkioket.

The killing certainly would be over by now. But they would still need to be very wary for a while.

Nenkru touched Kulvok’s shoulder. “Do you hear it still?”

“Louder.”

“What can it be?” puzzled Nenkru.

“What I told you it was,” said Kulvok impatiently.

“A heart? What heart? Only our hearts make a sound. Or is it
his
heart?”

“It’s not
his
heart. I’ve never heard the heart of Ulkioket beating. Perhaps it doesn’t. Perhaps he has none.”

Prepared to wait, the men squatted. They could not make a fire; that would be unwise so close to Ulkioket.

Looking over the brink of the ridge, Kulvok made something out after all, but this too was usual, to note such signs in the more flexible places of the ice. The awful beauty of the signs repelled him. Whenever he saw them, they repelled him. He was not respectful or religious about the marks, as were the rest of the band. Their band’s very way of life was evil and disgusting, and Kulvok the shaman knew it, even if the others
refused
to know it.

To live—by
this
—

“See—see—”
Etuk whispered on a silver breath.

As if they’d never seen it before. Though it was a fact that few saw it and lived to view it
again
.

Miles off, where the white snow hills marched away from the valley, sudden swirls of gleaming motion rose, like an unfrozen wave, luminous, indecipherable. If you didn’t recognize it.

“Ulkioket.”
The men sighed.

Winter,
thought Kulvok,
they call him winter
.

And next,
Why am I angry? Nothing has changed. For us, that’s his name now.

But in spite of Ulkioket’s departure, the heart still thudded, and when the last quiver of light had faded behind the snows, he got up and ran on, towards the murdered village.

THEY were scavengers, Nenkru’s band.

Their sort had been given a general name among the many tribes: Kimolaki. Which meant Fox-Men, for the white fox was a coward and a thief, sneaking in to take the leavings of animals more powerful than itself. As did their tribe.

How had they come to it?

Kulvok did not care to recall. In the ordinary way, was the best answer. Because of poverty and death and dearth. And the winter. Always the winter, the ancient enemy of the Northlands. Anything really could be blamed on the winter, which crept up on the little time of summer that lasted only three months, burnt the last fruits black on the bushes, turned the sea to marble, and chained the sun to the horizon so that he never rose higher than one-eighth of the way up the enormous, sunken sky.

At the start, they had simply been trying not to die. Most of mankind would instinctually do that, beastkind too, seals and fish, the wolves and the great bears.

But then, instead of hiding or flying from death, from Ulkioket, they had come to see what might be gained.

Since that sunpass when they learned this, Nenkru’s Kimolaki had seldom gone hungry, or gone without fire or shelter. Even clothing, even weapons they got. Even ornaments. What Ulkioket wrecked and left behind him so carelessly became of vast benefit to them. So now, like many other scavengers, Kulvok supposed, they said prayers to Ulkioket, put up little altars to him. Worshipped the filthy, foul, and fearsome
nightmare
thing.

While the true gods and spirits of the North, Kulvok was certain, cursed them all and planned for them some terrible hell of suffering. And a worse one for himself, since he was a magician and should know better.

But until he was dead, slain by the winter, or by Ulkioket, the monster named Winter, or merely by another man, Kulvok would not know what his punishment was to be.

He glanced about him now as they sped on.

He and they were all so alike, the same as all their race, their tall, lean bodies hard from hardship, bronzen-skinned from cold-burn, black-eyed and black of hair. In all his years, not one of them had ever seen a man or woman who was not physically like themselves.

Yet why did Kulvok notice such a familiar thing now?

Umb-umb,
thrummed the heart.
Umber-umber-umb
.

HE had been eight years old when he saw the dragon. As the son of the shaman’s first wife, Kulvok, instead of being let out to play with the other boys in the red winter moonlight, was sent to gather driftwood from an ocean inlet. His father had read weird signs in the magic firepot the night before, and must relight it to learn more, and only this particular type of wood, which gave off a blue flame, was of use.

Kulvok was already trained to more work than play.

That he had a talent for sorcery, he didn’t yet grasp. Yet he liked to study it. And liked his father well enough, too.

He was alone along the frozen shore then, when he beheld for the very first time that uncanny metallic shimmer in the air.

Not knowing what it could be, he stood staring up at the low ice-cliffs above the bay.

The moon was over to the west, much redder, so that all which reflected its light had a coppery tone. Oddly, the metallic thing that moved between the cliff-top and the sky was more silver than red. It seemed to catch the reflection of the stars more than that of the moon.

Kulvok had to make a decision. Should he continue gathering the important driftwood, as he’d been told to do, or instead climb back up the ice and rock to find out what moved there?

He decided on the second course.

In fact, it would have made no real difference either way. In the end, the same thing would have happened.

By the time he had clambered out on the table of the cliff, the shining mystery had left it.

Perplexed, eight-year-old Kulvok paused, looking around.

That was when he noticed the marks.

Even then, he had thought them beautiful, though he would not have admitted to the phenomenon in quite that way. They
drew
him. So he knelt to trace one with his gloved finger.

It went without saying that the ice was freezing cold, and even through the sealskin of the glove he would have felt it—but this was more than that, far more. With a yelp, he snatched his hand away. And saw with horror that the tip of the glove had burned off and, under it, his fingertip was
black
—as if he had thrust it into a fire.

Despite being accustomed to his father’s often dangerous craft, Kulvok was frightened.

He sprang up, clutching his hand.

And in that moment saw what was below, out of the shadow of the cliffs, full in the blood-red moonlight. His village, of course, lay on the ice-plain down there. Kulvok knew the sight of it well. He had been born there, grown up there. The curved walls of the white towers, one storey or two of ice-bricks, with smudges of cook-smoke rising. Inside, the house-wolves would be lying, waiting for the evening meal; the women would bend to the savoury-smelling stone pots slung over the flames; men would mend things, sitting in the central lower room, where the fretted stone lamps each lifted a yellow flame, two or three feet tall. On the wall skins hung down, with little whale-ivory images of kind or helpful gods fastened to them with pins of iron or bone. All this, Kulvok pictured in that glance. Perhaps foreknowing.

He was at once aware, without consciously understanding what it was, that the other thing, which now moved between him and his world of light and warmth and safety, would end it instantly, like the smothering of a lamp.

And he cried out, Kulvok, in his high child’s voice. But the whining wind ate his cry.

The shape was beautiful too. Yet he could not bring himself to see it as anything beautiful, nor would he ever. Its hugeness he did comprehend. High as the low sky it looked, though it was not, for the cliffs stood higher. Moon red and dark and silvery, it eased sinuously forward, reflecting everything, almost like a misted silver mirror—or like the scales of black ice that armoured the winter bay. For it
was
ice, and
scaled
with ice, and the crest that stabbed out like flint spear-heads along its head and back and all the terrible yards of its eddying tail, they were ice also. And then it turned its head, just a little. And the child saw one of its eyes. Its huge eye—and this was almost more ghastly than all else—was like the
eye of a man or woman
. Yes, like that, a clear crystal white and an iris and pupil of pure inky blackness, and the eye was set into its long, wolf-like head, inside the same human, long, narrow lids that slanted at the outer corner.