The Falcons of Fire and Ice (52 page)

Chapter Thirteen

It was discovered that a parish priest was keeping a gyrfalcon in his barn. It was a bird of such great value that not even his own bishop could dream of owning such a prize. Everyone was certain there was only one way a poor man like him could have obtained such a bird: he must have stolen it. For a priest to be guilty of stealing was bad enough, but this was no ordinary theft. If he had stolen a horse or even a silver cup, as a man in holy orders he would have escaped with his life, but the white gyrfalcon must surely have belonged to no less a person than a prince or even a king. To steal from royalty was nothing less than treason, and not even the Church could protect a man accused of such a terrible crime.

The priest was found guilty and sentenced to be burned to death. The gyrfalcon was taken from him and securely tethered until it could be sent to the king. Then the priest was led to the stake and there he was bound in chains to the post and the pyre was lit. But just as the flames took hold and leapt upwards, the gyrfalcon managed to escape its leash and flew straight towards the burning pyre. It perched on the top of the stake, spreading its wings protectively to cover the head of the priest. When the people who were gathered in the square saw this, they cried out, ‘It is a sign from God. The priest is innocent.’ At once they pulled away the burning wood and doused the flames. Then they released the priest from his chains and set him free.

Isabela

Pounces
– the claws or talons of a falcon.

Eydis heaved herself to her feet and hauled up Valdis’s limp body, settling it against her shoulder. Her bare back gleamed like white marble in the moonlight. I was wearing the thick woollen dress that Unnur had given me the first night in the farmhouse and still I was shivering in the cold night air. Eydis must have been freezing. She had lived most of her life in the warmth of the cave, and now she was suddenly outside in the bitter wind, with nothing more than a cloth bound about her breasts to keep her from the cold. Unnur took off her own shawl and tried to wrap her in it, but Eydis gently pushed it away, shaking her head.

With her free hand, she beckoned to me and to Marcos, pointing down the valley.

‘Komdu.’

She began to walk off in the direction she had indicated. I assumed that Fannar and the others would follow, but though they rose to their feet, they made no move to go after her.

‘Where’s she off to?’ Marcos said, looking bemused. ‘Do we go with her or stick with them?’

I didn’t answer, but instead lifted my skirts and ran after Eydis.

‘Falcons! You promised you would help me find the falcons. Please, I must find them!’

I pointed up at the dark sky and tried to imitate their call. I could barely see her in the darkness, and certainly nothing of her expression beneath the veil.

She lifted her hand and touched my cheek. It was a simple, motherly gesture, not that my mother had ever done that, but somehow I knew by it that she understood what I was asking. I trusted her. I knew she would keep her promise. I fell into step behind her and it was only after we had walked on a few paces that I realized in my haste I hadn’t said goodbye to Fannar and Marcos.

I turned of to see Marcos hurrying up towards me, cursing as his feet nearly slipped from under him on the loose stones.

I looked back at Ari, Fannar and his family. They were still standing, huddled together, watching us. They didn’t wave or call out, but after a moment or two little Lilja shyly raised her hand in a goodbye. My throat tightened with tears. I knew I would never see them again and they had risked so much for us. I wished I had something to give them, but even if I’d had a purse stuffed with gold, I don’t think they would have taken it.

‘Where are we going?’ Marcos said behind me.

‘I am going with Eydis,’ I told him firmly, but I certainly wasn’t going to tell him why, not even now. ‘Why didn’t you stay with Fannar?’

‘Can’t understand a bloody word any of them are saying. At least with you I’ll have someone to talk to. Besides, you need someone to look after you.’

‘I do not,’ I snapped. ‘I’m quite capable of taking care of myself.’

He snorted with derision. ‘Is that so? Where shall I start? First there was –’

But before I could hit him with the nearest rock, Eydis turned and motioned us to be silent.

‘Danir!’ she whispered, gesturing round at the dark slopes of the valley.

After all the terrors of the cave I had almost forgotten that we were still in danger out here. We trudged along in silence, glancing apprehensively around us every time we thought we glimpsed movement. I’d been so thankful to escape the cave, it had driven everything else from my mind, but now it all gushed back into my head – the mutilated children from the forest, the monstrous creature that had poured out of Valdis, and almost worst of all, the horrific figure of Jorge with his charred face and the gag, that cruel gag. Did he feel pain, even now? Surely, it all must just have been a bad dream, a nightmare.

But Vítor – he had been real. He had tried to kill me. He’d pushed me into the arms of that creature. If the rocks hadn’t fallen and struck it, if I hadn’t got to the passage before the mouth of the cave collapsed, I would be trapped in there with it. And then Vítor falling from the ledge when the ground shook, and his body lying crumpled at the bottom. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to block it out, but all those horrors were inside me now and there was no escaping the sight of them.

We walked and rested and walked on. None of us wanted to stop for long. We walked through the dawn, watching a pink light seep up over the mountains, staining the snow on the peaks blood-red, then fading to pink and finally sparkling white as the pale yellow sun inched over the rocks. The valleys were deserted. Once or twice in the far distance we watched a thin plume of smoke rising from a farmhouse or camp fire, but we saw no one.

As we walked I kept scanning the mountain tops and the sky for any sign of the white falcons, but there was none. I looked for anything that might be a ptarmigan, the falcons’ prey, but the only birds I could see were crows and ravens. I prayed desperately that I had not been mistaken and Eydis was leading us to the white falcons. She was my last hope. If she couldn’t find them, then I had signed my own father’s death warrant.

Dusk came quickly again and with it the first flakes of snow began to drift down, swirling round us in the wind. Marcos was trailing further and further behind, and I could see from the way Valdis’s corpse was flopping against Eydis’s shoulder that Eydis was as exhausted as I was. She stopped and pointed ahead a little way up the hill to where there was a hollow. At least that would provide a little shelter from the wind while we slept.

But we had taken only a few paces towards it when I glimpsed something rising from the rocky hillside a few yards away. Even through the falling snow, it was glowing in the twilight, a white pearly light, hovering over the ground. It was like the mist I’d seen in the forest when Eydis had entered my nightmare, but I knew I wasn’t dreaming now.

‘Eydis, look.’

She wheeled round, flinging her arm out, pushing me back. Two great hands appeared out of the solid rock, moving as if the owner was swimming up through it. The hulk of a body followed, and two legs as thick as tree trunks, but where a man’s head should have been was a mass of thick, wet seaweed, rippling and twisting as if it was still in the ocean and was caught in the swell of the waves.

With a roar the creature turned its shaggy head towards us, two burning red eyes peering out at us through the mass of weed. It lumbered down the hillside towards us. Eydis had let her sister’s body drop, so that it was swinging from her waist. She lifted something high in her right hand and I saw that it was the finger bone I had taken from the grave.

With her other hand she wrenched the cord from the lucet which hung from her waist and threw it on the ground between her and the creature. She pointed the bone at it. The cord slithered towards the creature, coiling itself into a perfect circle about its feet. I thought it would simply trample over the cord, but Eydis pointed at the cord again and it burst into scarlet and blue flames. The creature reeled backwards, lumbering around, desperately looking for a way out of the circle of fire. The flames climbed higher into the darkening sky. The creature began to howl, not in rage but in terror. The flames caught at the weeds of its face, shrivelling them up as it screamed in pain. Again and again, Eydis pointed the bone, forcing the fire to burn higher, more fiercely.

The creature was trying to beat out the flames on its head with its own hands. But as the weeds turned black and dropped away I saw a face emerge. It was the corpse in the cave, the draugr, only it wasn’t the face of a monster, but of a man now, terrified and in agony. It was the face of the boy burning on the pyre. It was Jorge’s face. It was my father’s face!

I grabbed at Eydis’s arm, trying to wrench the bone from her hand.

‘Stop! Stop it! You’re killing him. He is a man, just a man. Let him alone!’

But she pushed me away and I fell to the ground. The man was engulfed in flames, every part of him was burning, but he was no longer moving. He stood there for a moment, rigid like a great tree, then he came crashing down. The circle of flames died down and were extinguished. The body of the man was just a heap of ash, which the wind caught and sent swirling up with the snowflakes. He was gone.

Eydis crumpled to her knees and crouched there, her head bowed, rocking the body of her dead sister like an infant in her arms. I knew that beneath the veil she was weeping.

Marcos came running up. ‘What the hell happened? You’re shaking. Are you hurt? I stopped to make water and when I turned round suddenly there was a fire.’

‘It was … it’s out now,’ I said weakly.

‘I can see that. Pity, we could have done with a fire. Couldn’t you have kept just a little blaze going?’ He wrapped his arms about him against the cold. ‘Boiling lakes, the ground bursting into flames, that is when it’s not freezing your bol …’ He gave an embarrassed grin. ‘Even hell itself can’t be as diabolical as this place. I suppose at least we should be grateful it’s stopped snowing, but what next – floods and whirlwinds?’

Eydis heaved herself upright. She turned her veiled head towards me, but I walked away. I knew it was stupid to have felt sorry for that creature even for a moment. It was not alive, not really. Eydis had saved me. The creature would have ripped us to pieces. I knew that it had to be destroyed, but for the first time I understood why they had chained Eydis up in that cave and why they feared her so.

Eydis

Creance
– a long light line attached to the leash to give the falcon the illusion of freedom. It is mainly used when a falcon is being trained.

How can I explain to Isabela that I had to destroy him? Does she think I did not feel pity for the man? I watched him as he died at my hands. I saw the humanity return to his eyes. I heard him pleading for mercy. He had not asked to be called from his grave, nor transformed into the monster he became. It was another who did that to him, another who must bear the guilt of what they made him. But if I had relented, if I had weakened, given way to pity, he would have become that demon again.

Isabela will forgive me in time. She will come to understand one day that sometimes mercy is not kindness and pity is not love. But I saw the momentary fear in her face when she looked at me, the same fear that I had seen in others when Valdis and I were children, and it hurt me.

No matter how far the wind may blow them off course, every wild creature feels the unseen paths and lines that draw it home. Even the dead can sense the road they must travel through the stars. I thought I would not remember the way back to the river of ice, but when I close my eyes and trust to my dreams, I feel the pull like a current of water over my skin. All I have to do is follow it.

I long for a hundred eyes to look everywhere at once. To see the black rocks and golden sedges, the white clouds and blue skies reflected so sharply in the still pools that it seems as if the pools contain the real clouds and what drifts above us in the blue lake of the sky is merely a reflection. I listen to the wind rustling the dried leaf stalks, and the cry of the sandpiper. I breathe in the clean, sweet fragrance of grass, and the rich, pungent scent of the bogs. I feel the breeze pulling my hair, and the soft cushions of moss beneath my bare feet. And I wish for only one thing – that Valdis could see and smell and hear and feel the light, that glorious light that bathes the whole world.

Isabela and Marcos trail after me. Isabela is constantly gazing around, her eyes searching the rock faces and the skies for any sign of the falcons. She is not pulled towards a place, but driven to move on until she finds what she seeks. The force of it will no more let her rest than it will me.

As for Marcos, he makes me smile. Whereas Isabela delights in the vast open spaces, the colours gliding softly into one another, russet, bronze and copper, gold, gentian and green, Marcos can see nothing but mud and water, rocks to trip him and bogs to fall in. He stomps along, his shoulders hunched miserably against the cold, giving fearful glances at the emptiness as if he is constantly searching for some little corner to hide away from it all.

When night returns we seek the shelter of some rocks and nibble on the remains of the dried mutton strips that Fannar insisted on sharing with us and quench our thirst in an icy stream. We huddle against the rocks and try to sleep a little, but I am too restless to settle. I can tell from their tossing and turning that Isabela and Marcos cannot sleep either. So as soon as the moon rises high enough to gild the rocks and pools, I shake them and we move on.

It is cold. I had forgotten what cold feels like during all those years in the cave, the way it sets your teeth aching, your muscles tightening against it till they moan. My skirts are thick enough, but I have only the thin wrap around my breasts. If I was alone I would take Valdis’s wrap to help cover me, but even though she is dead, I cannot expose her naked to strangers.