Ursus of Ultima Thule (17 page)

“Bear dies, iron dies,” muttered the aged smithy-Chief. “Iron dying, Wolf dying. Bear sleeps death-sleep, so must iron sleep. Bear comes to life, so must iron. One queen is every queen.

“
Lion, tiger, wolf and bear
,

Bee and salmon, mole and hare
,

they shift their shapes … Mayhap Nains be dying, too. Uur-tenokh-tenokh-guur is cold. The forges of Nainland are cold.” He muttered something in the Old Language, in the Witchery Tongue. Old Bab murmured something back. “Could thee vision such a thing?” the old man of the nain-forges asked his silent guests, swaying, caring not, on his knuckles. “I had never dreamed to see it, nor thought it could be seen. Smoothskins! Know’st thee all what I tell thee?” He quite suddenly shambled forward, they stepped back and away, he raised his hands and spread his palms and gestured them to go out before him and he followed, they hearing the never-before-heard-by-them sound of a creature of the sort who walks on two limbs now padding along on four. A moment more and they stood on the threshold of his lair. It seemed as though something at that moment had pierced the sky, the cold sun perhaps, for the day grew sudden bright and before them they saw, spread out over all as far as they could see, the stone tables all blackened with fire which were the forges which had once supplied all Thule with iron, whose fires and whose smokes were proverbial, the sounds of which were fabled. The forges of Nainland lay before them, where once was beaten out all the iron work of Thule.

“No fire,” crooned Uur-tenokh-tenokh-guur. “No smoke, no hammering. No sough, no blast. The hearts of Nainland have ceased to beat. The forges of Nainland are cold, are cold.

“The forges of Nainland are cold …”

• • •

But still fires smoldered, as though too cast down to blaze, on the inner hearths; and the ancient seemed — perhaps only seemed — younger, healthier, quicker, sounder, keener, as they all of them crouched with him, with him and some several other nains. Arntenas-Arnten had told them what he could of their kinsmen toiling in the quickeningly futile labor of the mines of iron round about which Orfas King had built his prison walls. Nain-thralls … the word came not easy to their mouths, mostly they growled it low, in their throats and chests. And they growled, sighed, when he repeated to them some few parts of the songs the nain-thralls sang, as it had been translated to him, sang as they toiled, slow dirgelike chanting:

“Or did they think it truly, not thinking me to be a fool, but being only fools themselves? ‘Forge cold iron, then’? Why — were the smallest hammer in all Nainland to beat one stroke on the smallest forge, Orfas would hear it, Orfas would say in his wolfish heart, ‘The nains have tricked me!’ Did he not threat me he would come here with all his company of spearsmen? Some say to fear he not, but I say: Fear all smoothskins, walk lightly through all their lands, but make no smallest move which might make them walk through Nainland.

“Bear! What now?”

“This I hoped to hear from thee, grand-uncle.”

“Why? How? Why?”

“Some had said so.”

“What else, some had said?”

Arntenas paused, mused. Then, “Feed the wizards,” he said. A great sigh, a groaning, moaning, like some odd wind, and in the dim light the thick bodies of the nains swayed like a grove of great trees sway in the wind: not much, not much at all: put perceptibly. Uur-tenokh-tenokh-guur gazed at the fire, his face now seemed greedy, he grunted a word, fire was built higher. He spread his nostrils wide, as though grateful even for the scent of smoke. Someone among the nains had picked up a stone, and gave it a crack against the stone seats on which they all sat or crouched. And another. Another. It was not, then, a forge-stone, and no one needed fear that the spies called the king’s ears would hear it; but it beat a slow forge-rhythm and as it beat and as the nains swayed in the shadow and the smoke, the aged chief of all their smiths beat his fists upon his knees, and, beating, spoke.

He told them that iron was a living thing which grew in the ground, which breathed and sweated, that fire opened the pores of iron and that water closed them. Every wood has its witch, and every metal, too, that sometimes one entered the other … by breath, by mouth, by pores. That nains could see the pores opening in firey iron (though this they knew) as they could see them close when quenched in water; whilest men could see neither; just as nains could see a sundry multitude of patterns as iron lay gasping in the hot embrace of the fire, knew how to work it, taking note of these patterns and particles. The nain-sense of such things was part of nain-craft, of nain-lore. Of witchery.

True, admitted the old smith, nains could not indeed walk in the fire as could the salamander, though, true, he stated simply, nains could hold iron far, far hotter than ever men could do. The old, deep-sunk eye glowed redly, no more mere amber.

“Past the forests and the heaths which are past Nainland, lie the Paar Marshes, and past them are the Death Marshes, and past them are the Great Glens where the wizards have their deep caves: but seldom has any dared go that way, for the airs of the marshes and the airs of the caves are alike intermittently foul and often deadly. It is when lightning strikes these thick murk mists that dragons are engendered. And as to what use these dragons may be put, these are not the concern of either nains or perries or of men, and certainly not of the gross barbar-folk who come a prowling, at times a-prowling, o’er the all-circling sea …” Uur-tenokh-tenokh-guur’s voice had fallen into something not unlike the storyteller’s chant, the taletellers’ mode: Arntenas recalled things his uncle used to tell round the fire hearths as the snow-daemons howled and prowled, of were-whales and tree-tigers and the bewitchments of the Painted Men whose skin must not be seen, he shuddered, recalling his own single encounter with one such; the memory as well as the old nain’s words bringing swift reflection on perries; but this swiftly went from him as he attended closely and heard one by one the other nains join in and their voices sink into deep chant of the divine and dying Bear, who descends into death each winter and arises from his grave whilst still the earth in which his grave was made lay still locked strong in death.

And then they had gone on to something else, he heard them intoning,
“By what three things is a king made? By strength, by magic, and by fortune.”
Had he not heard this before? Twas naintalk. No nearer to his destination did it bring him. But … “By three things is a king unmade. By fortune, by witchery, by strength.” He sighed. Less than a year ago he was a child, eating offals, glad for bones: now he sat by the hearthfire of the nains. Let him, then, listen, bide his time, hold up his head, hearken Well. Yet his head drooped. Then it snapped up.

“First comes All-Caller, the great fey horn,” the old nain held the syllables in his mouth as though reluctant to release them. “Next comes True Iron. True Iron casts out false. Next comes Fireborn, first-born Son of Fire. Fireborn hews false iron into pieces. All is known to the wizards, but the wizards are known to few or none. The nains know iron, more ever than men do know iron, much more do the nains know.

“But there be things which e’en the nains know not, e’en of iron: and these do the wizards know. And if their mouths be closed, there is that which will make them open … food will make them open.”

In his narratings he brought them now safe past the Death Marshes and into Wizardland, and told how there was neither game nor fish in Wizardland, neither grew there any plant for food. So had the wizards learned to go one hundred years upon one single meal, yet they can go no longer. They cannot be said to live. But neither dare one call them dead. And at this Uur-tenokh-tenokh-gurr slowly swung his shag old body and moved his great head upon its stiff neck and looked full at Arntenas-Arnten. And the chanting died away. And only the old nain was heard.

“Who else, not in Wizardland — who else, not a wizard — has in sooth and in truth gone longer without taking food, taking drink, than any nain or simple man? If not a hundred years, then one-third of one hundred days, and several days more? The Bear. The Bear. In sooth and in truth. The Bear. One has heard that the wizards know the reason for the death of iron. One has heard this whispered in the snows and heard it in the winds, and one may have seen it also in the stars. It may not be so. Not all one hears is so. But it may be so. It may be worth the striving and the risk. To go into the Great Glens to seek the wizards is by no means to go to certain death, else none had returned by whose accounts we have reason and kenning to speak. Let he who has gone long without eating go and feed those who may have gone even longer by now without eating; and let him not go quite alone, and let him bring them a meal of liver and fat and marrow spread on a clean piece of bark and sprinkled with clean sea-salt.

“And let him ask. Then let him ask. And then let him ask about the death of iron. And, ah, and, O! Let him hearken and listen well, so well.” His voice sank, sank, sank. “
For the forges of Nainland are cold
.”

As his company was now increased to five, himself included, Arn-Bear had thought that perhaps he might find five elk waiting when it came time to move on. It was wry, how each of the first four in turn made as if to offer his own place as elk-rider to the new companion, and how each in turn, after a longer look, gave up the notion. Something in the new one’s look seemed clearly to say the offer was not needed, would be better not made.

It seemed to them that he was young, as well as such things might be estimated of nains. To say that he seemed strong is to say that he seemed a nain. His broad back was well-packed with store of the increasingly scant supply which Nainland had to offer, and yet Nainland had given of that supply to the other four as well. And in one vast hand he held a silex, the nain weapon of ancient-most legend, antedating even that bronze metal which had died of the green-sickness long and long ago: hewn of glittering quartz flint: knife, with his own hand as handle — axe, with his long enormous arm as axe-haft.

Uur-tenokh-tenokh-guur was as they first saw him, now as they last saw him: slightly swaying as he stood and leaned upon the backs of his hand-knuckles. And his eyes were but dull amber eyes in the light of the pale cold day. But other nains there were who spoke, though he was silent. “Have you ever seen a like to this, then, Bear?” asked one of these, holding up a piece of hide, cured well. Arn knit his shag brows, his face saying plainly that he kenned not the question.

Something which might have been the husk of a laugh — if nains laughed — rattled in the nain’s chest. He brought the piece of well-cured hide closer. For a moment still frowning, Arn looked closely at it, though the frown had already begun to melt in the awareness that there was no nonsense here. And then it was as though the piece of hide spoke to him. Frown vanished in a look of enlightenment, which was joy. He reached for the hide’s other end.

“Surely this green mark which turns and turns like a snake is no snake, nor even eel,” he said; “but surely — here, for here I see it be marked with a fish! — surely this be river?”

“It does be river,” said the nain.

“And here there is a — oh, it is like a medicine-picture — a witchery-mark, yet not: hills. These be hills and the river winds down the hills …”

“The river does wind down the hills,” the nain agreed.

Most of the pictures, marks, symbols, Arn grasped. A few had to be explained to him. He did not know the sign for wizard. “Though I should surely in time have scanned that out,” he said, with dignity. Arn was often straight with dignity those days.

“Surely in time,” the nain agreed.

“This is a pretty device, this … map? — this map,” he went on, and then his sense over-weighed even his dignity, and he said, “I wish that I had had one sooner.” he said. Then, very quickly, “Had I, then might I have found my father sooner, and been more with him whenas we were free.” Something burned in his throat: the smell of burning bracken, the smell of guard-torches. Something burned in his eyes, too.

The nain said, “The Bear were friend a-we,” dropping into his common speech, as though somehow embracing and including and understanding. Then, as before: “We cannot be sure of all painted here. Perhaps if you find something wrong, or something not on here — ”

“I will paint it so as we go.”

No palisades marked the settlements of Nainland, only the deep-set nain-lairs and here and there dark-stained places where charcoal had been burned, and thin lines of smokes from the lairs. And here and there a nain returning, usually empty-handed, from a search for food, making deep tracks in the snow. And, by every settlement, by every group of lairs, the blackened stone tables which were the nain-forges.

And each such place seemed to echo with the lament of Uur-tenokh-tenokh-guur:
The forges of Nainland are cold
.

• • •

Arn noticed that his elk had stopped, and the others as well. He wondered if it were time for food, or a fire, or — His mind had been far away. He looked around and saw the young nain at his side, and now, for the first time, this one spoke: “I have never been past here,” he said.

Arn blinked, cleared his eyes. A different kind of landscape lay ahead of him, very flat, and thinly covered with a different kind of trees, strange and tall and twisted pines, with black needles free of snow. “This is the end of Nainland, then,” he said, not asking.

His new companion gave the deep click which was the nain assent. “Here begins the Paar Marshes,” he said.

“Mark where the sun now stands,” Arn said, “and so straight on.” For a while he strained to think what different sound there was, then it came to him that what was different was the absence of a sound he had grown used to during the earlier part of the journey. The snow did not whisper any longer. There lay none on the twisted tall pine trees, none shifted with the wind, there was no wind. And none fell whispering from the feet and fetlocks of the elk.