Ursus of Ultima Thule (4 page)

Some had inherited.

So had he.

The knife alone would at any time have been deemed a good inheritance, the more so now that good iron was hard to find and harder to keep. The more so for the circumstances of its hiding and finding. But what did the other mean? A bear claw, now that was easy to understand. But the reed? The greenstone?
Arnten, find your father
. Had he found him? Not yet. But now, having found this much, might he not find a source? For as long — no, longer — than he himself had lived, the nains had not seen his father. He might be dead. He might be far away. He might be neither. He might be alive and very near.

Arnten carefully restored the magic items to their pouch — except for the knife, which he slung about his waist — and started off. Excitement and happiness had made him heedless and when he heard the low-voiced song in the clearing he had no thought but to see who was singing it.

It was one of the Painted Men, that was at once obvious — one of the Painted Men whom it was death to see unpainted. By greatest good fortune, though, he had just finished painting himself — and what a curious pattern his skin did present! Almost hideous. Not till the man, still humming his witchery-song, lifted his brush and dipped it in a tiny pot did Arnten realize, cold with horror, that what he was seeing was the man’s naked skin! — that he had only then begun.

The Painted (or unPainted) Man swung about, panting with shame and rage. Arnten felt the club’s first blow.

The old nain stood stolidly where the uneasy soldiers had bade him stand. He could without great effort have broken the ribs of all of them and the necks of most before any of them could stop him — and perhaps it was this that made them uneasy. But perhaps not. The king’s camp and court was an uneasy place in general these days — not that the rest of Thule lay at much ease either. Slots of sunlight came through the smoke hole in the top of the great tent. The king sat back on a pelt-piled bench and the nain thought it seemed they lied who said the king was age-wasted. Indeed, as the Orfas sat there, glaring, hands clenched upon his knees, he seemed all too vigorous.

Within himself the old nain sighed a slight sigh. Only to the extent that the smoothskins were unpredictable were they predictable at all. Ah, eh. Seasons come and seasons go and ever the race of nains would remain upon the earth. Meanwhile, one endured. Heat, cold, toil, hunger, thirst, a savage beast, an unwise king.

A witchery queen.

The soldiers, fumbling and breathing their unhappiness, finished shackling the old nain’s horsehide fetters to one of the roof posts, were angrily waved outside, almost stumbled over each other in their eagerness to obey.

For a long moment the king continued to glare. Then he said, slowly and with effort, but quite correctly, “Uur-tenokh-tenokh-guur.”

So, this was something. At least the king remembered the nain’s proper name. Or had learned it. A small courtesy, perhaps. But a courtesy. He would return it. “Orfas,” he said.

The king’s head snapped up with a jerk. He was not angered, he was not pleased, his attention had been called to something forgotten. Probably it had been long since he had been called by his own name in the Old Tongue, called anything (perhaps) save King or Great Bull Mammont or some other lick-leg flattery such as the smoothskins used. The old nain almost without thinking essayed more syllables in the witchery language, but the king’s swift gesture cut him off.

“My store of that speech has rusted in my mind,” Orfas said, “as has my store of the iron you have cursed.” His head shifted, his eyes flashed. “
Why
have you cursed it?”

“We have not. Do you curse your kingdom?”

“You are the High Smith of the nains. I have not had you brought here to bandy questions with me.”

“You had not brought me here at all, had I not thought you would keep your word.”

Bluff and bluster. What? Not kept his word? How?

“You said I would not be bound.”

A false and further look of outraged pride, falling into one of faint regret and helplessness at having been stupidly misunderstood. “I said that you would not be bound with iron.”

“It is by such cunning shift of words that you hope to command either my respect or my assistance?” The king flushed, either in affront or from some vestigial sense of shame. “Do you think me an owl or a bat, unable to see in daylight? I see that none of your captives are bound in iron. It is not out of any honor that I have been bound in thongs of skin, but because you no longer trust iron.” It was a statement, not a question, it went home. The king looked aside, for a moment at a loss. “I will give you an advice — ” The king sat up. “Sea-cow’s skin is tougher by far and far less risky to hunt.”

The king growled and moved on his bench. Then he came forward and, stooping, loosed the High Smith’s bounds. “It is well,” the old nain said aloud. In his mind he said that in the brighter light Orfas looked his full age indeed. Gray streaked the once yellow hair, now scanted. The smoothskin was no longer quite so smooth of skin at all: here wrinkled, there slack, elsewhere puffed with fat where not hollowed. It was nonetheless well, this act. Uur-tenokh-tenokh-guur sat and the king sat before him. Would he eat? — Would he drink? the king asked. The nain grunted, held his hand up. No. A silence fell.

“Listen,” said the king at last. “What will you nains do when the barbar-folk invade?”

“I do not know that they will invade. I do not believe that they will invade. Why do you think so?”

The king restrained himself. Beneath his shag eyebrows his eyes looked at the nain like the waters of a wintry sea. “Why should they not invade? Are we now known to them as the source of great wealth? Amber and ivory and peltry — do they not value these things? Is there not a proverb,
When the prey stumbles, the hunter sharpens his knife
? They will invade to gain our wealth; they will invade because without iron, good iron for weapons, we are weak before them; they will invade because I tell you they intend to invade and it is in order to strengthen themselves by weakening us that they have cursed our iron — ”

The old nain wheezed in the way that nains have and he said, “So now it is the barbar-folk who have cursed iron. And not the nains.”

Slant-glanced, Orfas looked at him. “All the witchery of iron is yours and you have kept it yours and we have suffered you to keep it yours. Besides the one kept by treaty at my court, there has been no forge outside of Nainland. If any man had a broken spear or plowpoint, he had to wait in hopes of a wandernain coming by with unbroken spear or plowpoint to trade him old for new plus a goodly gift. Nay, High Smith. I never begrudged the nainfee, myself paying highest of all. If this is at the bottom of all, let it be said the nainfee will be raised, let it be doubled, tripled — ”

“It is not we.”

The king’s teeth clenched upon a strand of beard he had thrust into his mouth. “What has ever happened to iron without the nains causing it to happen?”

“This is a new thing, King. Had we not asked you long before you asked we?”

The king’s hand made a movement, the king’s face made a movement. The king was not in an instant persuaded. “You asked in order to cover yourself. But you have not covered yourself. Do you not know that
the king’s ears are the longest ears in Thule?
I hear all things and I can, from what I hear, reckon all things. Thus it is that I know that iron is accursed, that the nainfolk have cursed it — at whose behest and for what purpose? Your silence is useless. Speak, then.”

The old nain sighed.

“If you hear all things, then already you have heard of what the nains say among the nains in Nainland, namely that it is doubtless a device of the neglected wizards of Wizardland in order to ensure that they do not remain neglected: this curse, the death of iron. And if from what you hear you can reckon all things, then you can reckon what needs be done.”

Now it was the king who sighed.

“You speak to me as though we were two old women pounding bark. You will speak differently if I come upon Nainland with all my men.”

The old High Smith shook his massive head, “It is all one, if you come upon Nainland with all your men or with but one or none of your men. The forges of Nainland are cold, Orfas. The forges of Nainland are cold.”

• • •

As he stepped from the outer to the inner of the two rooms in which he was to be lodged — or confined — he saw three great white flowers lying together upon a mat. He stopped still.

“I thought you might remember,” a voice said. “I thought it might please you.”

“Dame, I do remember,” the old nain said. “And I am pleased.”

Without bending down, he touched the flowers with his fingers. The blooms were scentless, but the room contained the scent of some that had never blossomed in the northern land of Thule. He had heard of the tiny horns and small flasks carven in strange designs upon strange stone, which contained the odorous essences of plants for which Thule had no name, delivered at intervals in trading vessels for great price and for the anointing and the pleasure of the Orfas Queen. He turned.

“Your face told me that you had never seen them before and that they pleased you; so I gave them to you, the three of them, and presently you gave me these — ” She took from her broad bejeweled belt the ivory case containing the three small things so carefully wrought: dirk and spoon and comb. “Only see,” she said, sorrowfully. The red-rotted metal crumbled at her slight finger touch. “Can you not effect a cure?”

His broad stern face relaxed into something much like sorrow, he held both his hands straight up at the wrists. “They are so small,” he said, musing. “All the witchery of iron known to the nains might just suffice to mend them. But the Orfas King would not believe that. If these could be cured, he would expect, he would demand, he would require, that all the rotting iron in his realm be cured. And this cannot be done. I do not say it can never be done. But it cannot be done now. I do not know when. Perhaps never again in our lives — Dame — perhaps never in our lives — ”

A moment’s silence. “I shall leave them at the forge,” she said. Again a moment’s silence. Her beauty seemed no less than it had been that long ago when Uur-tenokh-tenokh-guur had been a wandernain and she the lady of the Orfas Chief. He not yet king. She not yet queen. Sundry sayings floated in his mind.
One queen is every queen, every queen is all queens
. A beautiful woman, no doubt, and without question well versed in witchery, though he knew as little of queencraft as she of naincraft. She spoke again and said, “What have you to tell me of one who waits to return from across the all-circling sea?” He looked at her with pure unknowing and the certainty ebbed from her face. Then she said, “One who is not to be named, one who is the son of the half-brother — ”

Understanding seemed to come not so much from his mind as from his broad and grizzled chest, whence a sigh of comprehension welled. “Ahhh. That one, who contested with — Nay, Dame, I haven’t seen that one for four handfuls of seasons. Eh, must be full four. Nor heard of that one in that time. Say you that he has passed the all-circling seas?”

She gazed at him, a line between her brows. “Say you not? I see you seem full ignorant of what I had thought every nain, as every man, has heard: that one fled to the barbar-lands after fleeing court — when my Orfas gained the kingship — and has conspired to curse the iron so that, when he returns with hordes of barbar-folk, the kingsmen shall be as though unarmed. And say you that you know this not?”

He stretched forth both his long, long arms and held up both his thick and calloused palms — straight up — and he looked at her with pure unknowing.

• • •

Long he sat there alone, musing on what she had said, striving to make sense of it. Long he sat there, reflecting on old conflicts long forgotten — though clearly not forgotten by the Orfas King. Long he sat there, yearning for the red fires and the hot forges and the lust and joy of beating out the good red iron. Old forge songs and sayings came to him and old sayings not of the forge at all, such as
By what three things is a king made? By strength, by magic, and by fortune
.

Having set in the outercourt a watch of mandrakes who would shriek beshrew if so much as unbidden shadow fell, Merred-delfin, the principal witcherer, and the king and queen sat in the Room of Secret Counsel.

Said the queen, “What news?”

Said the king, “What help?”

Said the sage, “Much news, little help.”

In his mind he said,
Little news, no help
. But one did not say such dire words, doom words, to the king. “Slayer of Spear Teeth, the Painted Men report a spy in the forest. I have no fear; the spy is dead.”

Said the king, “Why dead? Why dead? From a dead spy no news can be gotten.”

Said the queen, “Why not dead? A dead spy betrays no secrets.”

Said the sage, “Great Dire Wolf, a dream has been dreamed of All-Caller, the great fey horn. No doubt this portends great good and who better to enjoy great good than thee, Great Dire Wolf?”

Said the king, “Ah.”

Said the queen, “Oh.”

Said the sage, “Woe.”

Said the king and queen,
“What?”

Said the sage quite swiftly, “Woe to the enemies of the King of Thule, the Slayer of Bull Mammonts, the Great Dire Wolf.”

Said the sage quite slowly, “Wearing my Cloak of Night, I crept to the mines; there I heard the nain-thralls chanting in the Old Language, singing in the Magic Tongue. Lord and Lady, they intoned a tale of Fireborn, a thing of witchery of which they said it will cut good iron.
Good Iron!
— Lord and Lady! And if the nainfolk make words about a good iron, is this not a sign that the nains know that iron will soon be as good as iron was before?”

Said the sage quite steadily, “Lady, you must use all your ways and wiles. Lady, you must prepare for many journeyings. Lady, you must wear many masks.”

Then they set their heads even closer together and they whispered and nodded and bit their lips. The mandrakes muttered. And the shadows danced.