The Last Light of the Sun Read online

  “She can hurt you by drawing you here,” Brynn said. “It gets hard to come back. You know the tales as well as I do. I had … tasks in the world, lad. So do you, now.”

  Ceinion, down below, before: You do not have leave to go from us.

  Alun looked at the other man in the darkness, thought about the burden in those words. A lifetime’s worth. “You dropped your sword, to climb up here.”

  He saw Brynn smile then. A little ruefully, the big man said, “How could I let you be braver than me, lad?” He grunted again, and rose. “I’m too old and fat to crouch all night in the dark.” He stood there, bulky against the sky.

  The shimmering figure by the tree moved back, another half a dozen paces.

  “Iron,” she said, softly. “Still. It is … pain.”

  Brynn was motionless. He’d never have heard her, Alun realized. Not ever have known the music of this voice, through all the years. Most of a lifetime ago. He wondered at someone with the will to know of this, and not speak of it, and stay away.

  “But I left my … ” Brynn stopped. Swore, though quietly. Reached down into his boot and pulled free the knife that was hidden there. “My sorrow,” he said. “It was not intended, spirit.” He turned away, and stepping forward strongly, hurled the blade, arcing it through the night air, all the way down the hill and over the fence into the empty yard.

  A very long throw. I couldn’t have done that, Alun thought. He stared at the figure beside him: the man who’d killed the Volgan long ago, in the days when the Erlings were here every spring or summer, year after year. A harder, darker time, before Alun had been born, or Dai. But if you were slain in a small, failed raid today, you were just as dead as if it had been back then at the hands of the Volgan’s own host, weren’t you? And your soul … ?

  Brynn turned to him. “We should go,” he said. “We must go.”

  Alun didn’t move from where he knelt on the cool grass. And your soul?

  He said, “She isn’t supposed to exist, is she?”

  “What man would say that?” Brynn said. “Were they fools, our ancestors who told of the faerie host? The glory and peril of them? Her kind have been here longer than we have. What the holy men teach is that they endanger our hope of Light.”

  “Is that what they teach?” Alun said.

  Heard his own bitterness. Dark here, in the starry night, except for the light where she was.

  He turned his head again, almost against his will, looked at her, still backed away from the tree. Her hair was pale again. Since the knife had gone, he thought. She hadn’t come nearer, however. He thought of her fingers, touching him, the scent of flowers. He swallowed. He wanted to ask her again about Dai, but he did not. Kept silent.

  “You know it is true, what they teach us,” said Brynn ap Hywll. He was looking at Alun, not over at the figure that stood beyond the tree, shimmering, her hair the colour now of the eastern sky before the morning sun. “You can feel it, can you not? Even here? Come down, lad. We’ll pray together. For your brother and my men, and for ourselves.”

  “You can … just walk away from this?” Alun said. He was looking at the faerie, who was looking back at him, not moving, not saying a word now.

  “I have to,” said the other man. “I have been doing it all my life. You will begin doing it now, for your soul’s sake, and all the things to be done.”

  Alun heard something in the voice. Turned his head, looked up again. Brynn gazed back at him, steadily, a looming figure in the dark of the night. Thirty years with a sword, fighting. The things to be done. Had either of the moons been shining tonight—if the old tales told true—none of this would have happened.

  Dai would still be dead, though. Among all the other dead. Brynn’s daughter had challenged him with that, driven him out of doors because there was … no answer for her, and no release from this hollowness within.

  Alun turned back to the faerie. Her wide-set eyes held his. Maybe, he thought, there was a release. He drew a slow breath and let it out. He stood up.

  “Watch over him,” he said. Not more than that. She would know.

  She came forward a few steps, to the tree again. One hand on it, as if embracing, merging into it. Brynn turned his back and started resolutely down and Alun followed him, not looking back, knowing she was there, was watching him from the slope, from the other world.

  When he reached the farmyard, Brynn had already reclaimed their swords. He handed Alun his, and his belt.

  “I’ll get my knife in the morning,” ap Hywll said.

  Alun shook his head. “I saw where it fell, I think.” He walked across the yard. The lanterns inside did not cast their glow this far, only lit the windows, showing where people were, the presence of life among the dying and the dead. He found the knife almost immediately, though. Carried it back to Brynn, who stood for a moment, holding it, looking at Alun.

  “Your brother was our guest,” he said at length. “My sorrow is great, and for your mother and father.”

  Alun nodded his head. “My father is a … hard man. I believe you know it. Our mother … ” Their mother.

  Let the light of the god be yours, my child,

  Let it guide you through the world and home to me …

  “My mother will want to die,” he said.

  “We live in a hard world,” Brynn said after a moment, reaching for words. “They will surely find comfort in having a strong son yet, to take up the burdens that will fall to you now.”

  Alun looked up at him in the darkness. The bulky presence. “Sometimes people … don’t take up their burdens, you know.”

  Brynn shrugged. “Sometimes, yes.”

  No more than that.

  Alun sighed, felt a great weariness. He was the heir to Cadyr, with all that meant. He shook his head.

  Brynn bent down and slipped the dagger into the sheath in his boot. He straightened. They stood there, the two of them in the yard, as in a halfway place between the treed slope and the lights.

  Brynn coughed. “Up there you said … you asked her to take care of him. Um, what did … ?”

  Alun shook his head again, didn’t answer. Would never answer that question, he decided. Brynn cleared his throat again. From inside the house, beyond the double doors, they heard someone cry in pain.

  Neither of them, Alun realized, was standing in such a way that they could see if there was still a shimmering above them on the hill. If he turned his head …

  The big man abruptly slapped his hand against his thigh, as if to break a mood, or a spell. “I have a gift for you,” he said brusquely, and whistled.

  Nothing for a moment, then out of the blackness a shape appeared and came to them. The dog—he was a wolfhound, and huge—rubbed its head against ap Hywll’s thigh. Brynn reached down, a hand in the dog’s fur at its neck.

  “Cafall,” he said calmly. “Hear me. You have a new master. Here he is. Go to him.” He let go and stepped away. Nothing again, at first, then the dog tilted its head—a grey, Alun thought, though it was hard to be sure in the darkness—looked at Brynn a moment, then at Alun.

  And then he came quietly across the space between.

  Alun looked down at him, held out one hand. The dog sniffed it for a moment, then padded, with grace, to Alun’s side.

  “You gave him … that name?” Alun asked. This was unexpected, but ought to have been trivial. It didn’t feel that way.

  “Cafall, yes. When he was a year old, in the usual way.”

  “Then he’s your best dog.”

  He saw Brynn nod. “Best I’ve ever had.”

  “Too great a gift, my lord. I cannot—”

  “Yes, you can,” said Brynn. “For many reasons. Take a companion from me, lad.”

  That was what the name meant, of course. Companion. Alun swallowed. There was a constriction in his throat. Was this what would make him weep tonight, after everything? He reached down and his hand rested on the warmth of the dog’s head. He rubbed back and forth, ruffling the fur. C
afall pushed against his thigh. The ancient name, oldest stories. A very big dog, graceful and strong. No ordinary wolfhound, to so calmly accept this change with a spoken word in the night. It wasn’t, he knew, a trivial gift at all.

  Not to be refused.

  “My thanks,” he said.

  “My sorrow,” said Brynn again. “Let him … help keep you among us, lad.”

  So that was it. Alun found himself blinking; the lights in the farmhouse windows blurring for a moment. “Shall we go in?” he asked.

  Brynn nodded.

  They went in, to where lanterns were burning among the dead in the room beside the chapel, and among all the wounded children of Jad—wounded in so many different ways—within the house.

  The dog followed, then lay down by the chapel door at Alun’s murmured command. Outside, on the slope to the south, something lingered for a time in the dark and then went away, light as mist, before the morning came.

  CHAPTER V

  It had not been a good spring or summer for the traders of Rabady Isle, and there were those quite certain they knew why. The list of grievances was long.

  Sturla Ulfarson, who had succeeded Halldr Thinshank as governor of the island’s merchants and farmers and fisherfolk, might have only one hand but he possessed two eyes and two ears and a nose for the mood of people, and he was aware that men were comparing the (exaggerated) glories of Thinshank’s days with the troubles and ill omens that had marked the beginning of his own.

  Unfair, perhaps, but no one had made him manoeuvre for this position, and Ulfarson wasn’t the self-pitying sort. Had he been so, he’d have been inclined to point out that the notorious theft of Thinshank’s grey horse and the marring of his funeral rites last spring—the start of all their troubles—had happened before the new governor had been acclaimed. He’d have noted that no man, whatever kind of leader he might be, could have prevented the thunderstorm that had killed two young people in the night fields shortly after that. And he might also have bemoaned the fact that it was hardly within the power of a local administrator to control events in the wider world: warfare among Karch and Moskav and the Sarantines couldn’t help but impact upon trade in the north.

  Sturla One-hand did make these points decisively (he was a decisive man, for the most part) when someone dared challenge him directly, but he also set about doing what he could do on the isle, and as a result he discovered something.

  It began with the families of the young man and woman killed in the storm. Everyone knew Ingavin sent the thunder and all manner of storms, that there was nothing accidental if people were killed or homes ruined by such things (a world where the weather was utterly random was a world not to be endured).

  The girl had been doing her year of service to the volur at the compound by the edge of the forest. The young women of Rabady Isle took this duty, in turn, before they wed. It was a ritual, an honourable one. Fulla, the corn goddess, Ingavin’s bride, needed attention and worship too, if children were to be born healthy and the fields kept fertile. Iord, the seer, was an important figure here on the isle: in her own way, as powerful as the governor was.

  Sturla One-hand had paid a formal visit to the compound, bringing gifts, shortly after his election by the thring. He hadn’t liked the volur, but that wasn’t the point. If there was magic being used, you wanted it used for you, not against you. Women could be dangerous.

  And that, in fact, is what he discovered. The families of the young man and the girl were elbowing each other towards a feud over their deaths, each blaming the other’s offspring for the two of them being out by the memorial cairn, lying together when the lightning broke. Sturla had his own thoughts as to who had inveigled whom, but it was important to be seen to be conducting an inquiry first. His principal desire was to keep a blood feud from Rabady, or, at the least, to limit the casualties.

  He set about speaking with as many of the young ones as he could, and in this way came to have a conversation with a yellow-haired girl from the mainland, the newest member of the circle of women in the compound. She had come (properly) in response to his summons and had knelt before him, shy, eyes suitably downcast.

  She had little assistance, however, to offer concerning the two lightning-charred young ones, claiming to have seen Halli with the lad only once, “the evening before Bern Thorkellson came to the seer with Thinshank’s horse.”

  The new governor of Rabady Isle, who had been leaning back in his seat, an ale flask in his one good hand, had leaned forward. The lightning storm, the two dead youngsters, and a possible feud became less compelling.

  “Before he what?” said Sturla One-hand.

  He put the flask down, reached out with his hand and grabbed the girl by her yellow hair, forcing her to look up at him. She paled, closed her eyes, as if overwhelmed by his powerful nearness. She was pretty.

  “I … I … should not have said that,” she stammered.

  “And why not?” growled Ulfarson, still gripping her by the hair.

  “She will kill me!”

  “And why?” the governor demanded.

  She said nothing, obviously terrified. He tugged, hard. She whimpered. He did it again.

  “She … she did a magic-working on him.”

  “She what?” said Sturla, struggling, aware he was not sounding particularly astute. The girl—he didn’t know her name—suddenly rocked forward and threw her arms around his legs, pressing her face to his thighs. It was not actually unpleasant.

  She said, weeping, “She hated Thinshank … she will kill me … but she uses her power for … for her own purposes. It is … wrong!” She spoke with her mouth against him, arms clutching his legs.

  Sturla One-hand let go of her hair and leaned back again. She remained where she was. He said, “I will not hurt you, girl. Tell me what she did.”

  In this way, the governor—and later the people of Rabady—learned of how Iord the seer had made a black seithr spell, rendering young Thorkellson her helpless servant, forcing him to steal the horse, then making him invisible, enabling him to board the southern ship that had been in the harbour—board it with the grey horse—and sail away unseen. It was done by the volur to spite Halldr Thinshank, of course, which was not an unreasonable desire, by any means. But it was a treachery that had unleashed—obviously—malevolent auras upon the isle (Halldr’s, one had to assume), causing the calamities of the season, including the lightning storm that killed two innocent youths.

  Erling warriors were not, by collective disposition, inclined to nuanced debate when resolving matters of this sort. Sturla One-hand might have been more thoughtful than most, but he’d lost his hand (and achieved some wealth) raiding overseas. You didn’t ponder when attacking a village or sanctuary. You drank a lot beforehand, prayed to Ingavin and Thünir, and then fought and killed—and took home what you found in the fury and ruin you shaped.

  An axe and sword were perfectly good responses to treachery, in his view. And they would serve the useful additional purpose of displaying Sturla’s resolution, early in what he hoped would be a prosperous tenure as governor of the isle.

  Iord the seer and her five most senior companions were taken from the compound early the next morning, stripped naked (bony and slack-breasted, all of them, hags fit for no man), bound to hastily erected posts in the field near the cairn stone where the two youngsters had died.

  When they came for her, the seer tried—babbling in terror—to say that she’d deceived young Thorkellson. That she’d only pretended to cast a spell for him, had sent him back into town to be found.

  Sturla One-hand had not lived so many years by being a fool. He pointed out that the lad had not been found. So either the seer was lying, or the boy had seen through her deception. And though young Thorkellson had been known to be good with blade and hammer (Red Thorkell’s son would be, wouldn’t he?), he was barely grown. And where was he? And the horse? She had her magic, what answer would she give?

  She never did answer.

  T
he six women were stoned to death, the members of the two feuding families invited to throw—standing together—the first volleys of stone and rock, as the most immediately aggrieved. The wives and maidens joined the men, one of the times they were permitted to do that. It took some time to kill six women (stoning always did).

  The ale was good that night and the next, and a second ship from Alrasan in the south—where they worshipped the stars—appeared in the harbour two days later, come to trade, a clear blessing of Ingavin.

  The yellow-haired girl from the mainland had stood at the edges of the stoning ground; they’d made the younger ones from the compound come watch. She’d had a fearsome serpent coiled about her body, darting a venomous tongue. She was the only one not terrified of it. No one stood near her as they watched the old women die. The governor couldn’t remember (he’d drunk a good deal that day and night) just how he’d learned about her having been bitten back in the spring. Perhaps she had told him herself.

  The snake was noticed in the field. Not surprisingly. Serpents held the power of the half-world within the skin they sloughed, rebuilding it anew. A snake would devour the world at the end of days. It was much talked about that night. A sign, it was agreed to be, a harbinger of power.

  The girl was named by Sturla Ulfarson as the new volur of Rabady Isle a few days later, after the southern ship had done its trading and gone. Normally the men of Rabady didn’t make this choice, but these weren’t normal times. You didn’t stone a seer every year, did you? Maybe this change would prove to be useful, bring the power of women, seithr and night magic, the compound itself, more under control.

  Sturla One-hand wasn’t sure about that, and he couldn’t actually have traced with precision the thoughts or conversations that had led to any of these decisions. Events had moved quickly, he had been … riding them … the way longships rode a wave, or a leader on a battlefield rode the sweep of the fight, or a man rode his woman after dark.

  She was young. What of it? All the old ones were dead. They could have sent for a woman across the water to Vinmark, even to Hlegest itself, but who knew what that might have brought them, or when? Better not draw the attention of increasingly ambitious men there, in any case. The girl had saved them from the effects of an angry spirit and seemed to have been already chosen by the snake. Men had been saying that, in the taverns. Sturla could read a rune-message if it was spelled out for him.