M. Lachlan: Lord of Slaughter

‘Who’s here?’ said Mauger. ‘Who is speaking to me?’ Bollason’s sword was in his hand.

Elifr heard the voice in his head, a woman whispering, singing and muttering. He is here, he is here. The voice was very clear.

‘Show yourself, woman. Ghosts won’t protect you, scholar.’

The woman in the wolfman’s arms began to stir. She opened her eyes.

‘Set me down,’ she said. ‘Can you hear her?’

‘I can hear her. Who is she?’

Beatrice was shivering and he was reluctant to put her down, but she wriggled out of his arms onto the floor.

‘She is the voice of the waters. She is my sister. I must go to her. Get away from me, Azemar — this place is death to you.’ She crawled towards the pool.

‘I am not Azemar.’

Her eyes scanned the cavern as if trying to make sense of what she saw.

‘Where is Loys? Where is my Loys?’

‘Here, Beatrice. Run. Flee this place.’ Loys stayed back in the water, fearful of Mauger. Beatrice cried out and slid down to the pool’s edge, oblivious to the warrior beside her, the cruel sword in his hand.

‘Who are you and and who is this old fellow?’ she said. ‘I do not like his looks. He has a noose at his neck.’ Beatrice’s eyes were wide, staring into nothing. ‘Why am I pursued by foul wonders? What is this thing writhing and howling in my breast?’

‘Beatrice! Beatrice!’ shouted Loys, but she showed no sign of hearing him.

His shout seemed to wake the warrior from his stupor and he jumped into the water. Loys tried to scramble up towards where Styliane lay but he was too cold and too scared.

The warrior stood in the pool, the water up to his chest. ‘Who is it? Who is calling me? You, child?’ He pointed his sword directly in front of him, staring into space.

Someone scrambled down the stream towards the well. It was the vala.

She came to Elifr and hugged him. He felt her warmth.

‘Mother,’ said Elifr. ‘So the fate is inescapable.’

‘Yes,’ said the vala, ‘as we foresaw. This is the price of wisdom, Elifr. It is no great thing.’

‘I feared this day above all others.’

‘The skein is spun,’ she said. ‘There is nothing to stand in your way. Better to suffer now for an instant than to face torture in eternal time. This is the appointed place.’

‘I had thought to offer myself to the waters.’

Again the howl shook the cavern.

‘He is here for you. Your certain death unless you act on what was revealed. My name is Uthr. I am a Norn and a spinner of fates, the waters whisper it. I need to go across the bridge of light.’

Tears came into the wolfman’s eyes, his face long in the glow of the rocks. ‘Then go.’

They waded out to the furthest part of the well, forty paces in under the low roof.

The howl was close now.

The wolfman held her and kissed her. Then he pushed her beneath the water.

‘Three have come.’

‘Future, present and past — virgin, mother and crone.’

‘The Norns are at the water, weaving the fate of men and gods.’

‘The Norns are at the well of fate. It took me so long to find and bring my sisters. It cost so much.’

Who was speaking? Women. The dead girl? Beatrice was one of them, she sensed it.

‘The wolf is coming.’

‘The god is nearly here.’

‘What is required?’

‘What is ever required?’

‘Death of the most dear.’

‘Death of the most dear.’

‘You will not have my baby!’ Beatrice cradled her belly. ‘Loys?’ He came to her, wading warily past the warrior, who seemed oblivious to him.

‘High prices are paid at the well of fate.’

‘Odin gave his eye; what will you give?’

‘What will you give to hear the oracle speak?’

A clatter and a groan from the entrance to the pool and the boy Snake in the Eye came skittering down. The sword was still in him but in his hand he carried Bollason’s head.

He wriggled down and sat on the shelf beside her.

‘Well, here’s a pretty thing,’ he said. ‘Do you not see how the runes come to me? See them in their orbits, eight and eight. Yet eight go missing. Why, they are sitting in the waters. How shall they come to me?’

On the other side of the pool sat the girl, arms around her knees on a shelf above the water. She was young and pale in the ghost light. Next to her sat an old man — one-eyed, his skin stained dark, a rope tight at his neck, his beard and hair a dirty white straggle. He too stared down into the well, his good eye wide, full of madness, his other just a decayed socket. In his hand he had a spear — a blackened, burned shard of wood, but wicked sharp — and he held it as if in deep concentration, like a fisherman waiting on a bank. At Rouen, in the Rouvray forest, she’d seen a body dug from a bog by peat cutters. The old man reminded her of that. He chilled her to the core.

The howl again, nearer and louder.

The man stirred. She had the sense he wasn’t seeing what she saw — he hardly seemed to notice her. His movements were slow, almost torpid, and she remembered how she had felt in her trance on the beacon tower. Was he even there? Or was he some sort of apparition, as the girl seemed to be?

The girl knows what to do; she will lead the way.

Loys pulled himself out of the water, his body convulsing with the cold. He went to Beatrice and she opened her arms to him. He held her tight, trying to make his trembling jaw say some words of comfort. Inside her something keened and moaned. That symbol, the one that said ‘wolf trap’.

That terrible boy, that half-man Snake in the Eye, was talking to her. Her cold-numbed brain hardly registered what he said. Death, death, he was talking about death. He put out his hand to Loys and made a little blowing motion. Loys didn’t pay any attention and the boy looked puzzled.

The howl came from the top of the stream and Beatrice turned to see the wolf.

It was Azemar, though he was terribly changed, his eyes flickering green gems in the lamplight, his body twisted and misshaped like an exhumed root, his muscles tight, so tight they seemed to contort him. He held one shoulder high, the other low; his hands were talons, his jaw long, full of teeth as big as boar’s tusks, and his tongue lolled from his head, black with blood.

Snake in the Eye’s eyes widened with fear.

‘I don’t wish to have any conversation with this fellow,’ he said and jumped into the water. The splash seemed to wake Mauger. He stared at his sword as if trying to work out what it was for.

Azemar — or the thing he’d become — spoke: ‘What is happening to me? I’ve come for you. All these lives I’ve come for you; don’t turn me away now. Aelis, Adisla, Beatrice, don’t turn me away.’

‘I do not belong to you, Azemar.’

‘Do you not recall the light on the hills? Do you not remember what we vowed on the mountainside? I am yours, returned. I am yours.’

‘I remember now,’ said Beatrice. ‘I remember, pain and suffering and a love that died on the teeth of a wolf.’

‘I do not want this,’ said Azemar, ‘but I cannot leave you. I am driven by things I cannot control. I have eaten. I have been consumed. A wolf’s eye watches me.’ He seemed tormented by his words and jumped out over the water, to cling to the side of the cavern, his great talons seizing the rock.

‘Do not let that thing near me!’ shouted Snake in the Eye. ‘He wants something from me, for sure.’

The story you told to the pale god.

Tell it now.

The girl’s voice was in Beatrice’s head.

Snake in the Eye answered it. ‘What story?

Of the god who dies to please the fates.

‘I know you, girl.’ Snake in the Eye had terror in his eyes.