The Falcons of Fire and Ice (31 page)

‘Pastor Fridrik.’

‘Fridrik of where, Ari?’

The lad’s brow furrows as he tries to remember. ‘Borg … Fridrik of Borg, that’s what one of the gravediggers told me. Said it was a pity he hadn’t followed his father’s example and murdered himself, for he was turning out to be just as miserable a bastard as the old man was.’

‘So Fridrik has returned, has he?’ I murmur to myself, but the boy hears me.

‘You know him?’

‘If his father was the farmer Kristján, then I know a little of the family, though not much of the son.’

‘Was the old man as sour as they say?’

‘I never spoke to him, but I knew his wife. She sometimes came to Valdis and me when her sons were infants for cures and charms. But each time she came we could feel more sorrow in her. She complained that Kristján treated her no better than a hired maid, even in his bed she was of no more worth to him than a brood mare, and she spoke the truth, we were sure of that. But every story can be told in many ways and we believed that Kristján wasn’t entirely to blame. Even he must have noticed his wife was deeply in love, but not with him.

‘We saw that she was set on a path from which there would be no turning back, and so it proved to be, for one day she ran off with her lover, Kristján’s own brother, abandoning not only her husband but also her sons, who were still only children. It filled the gossips’ mouths for weeks. Every man or woman who came here was chewing some new little gobbet of it. Kristján’s humiliation made him a bitter man and any shoot of tenderness he might have had even for his own children withered inside him.

‘Over the years we heard stories of his sons leaving the farmstead one by one as soon as they were old enough, unable to endure their father’s violent temper. With no kin left to help him, and no hired man willing to work for such a brutal master, the farm fell into ruin and finally Kristján hanged himself in his own byre. As for Fridrik, all we know is that for a while he worked as a hireling, then one day he boarded a ship and disappeared. But that must be more than seven years ago … So now he is back from across the water and a Lutheran pastor …’

I lean forward. ‘Tell me, Ari, on which day of the week were the corpses of the drowned fishermen found, can you remember?’

He stares at me, evidently puzzled by such a question. ‘How should I remember that … ? No, wait, it must have been a Friday, for though we’d lost a day’s fishing on account of the storm, we did no fishing the next day either, for no fishing boat’ll put to sea on a Friday. That’s how we came to be ashore when the corpses washed up and could carry them up from the beach, else we’d all have been back at sea … Why, what does it matter what day it was?’

‘Because if a corpse is to be raised using the black arts, it must be on Friday night before Saturday dawns.’

Ari swallows hard. His voice is trembling a little. ‘You think he was the man I saw drowned and someone raised his corpse? But how?’

‘There are many ways to accomplish that. But if the corpse is newly dead, the sorcerer writes the Lord’s Prayer on a parchment using the feather of a water rail for a quill and his own blood for ink and he must carve the
troll runes
upon a stick. Then he must lay the stick on the corpse, rolling it as he reads the prayer he has written. Gradually, the body will stir, but before it gains its strength, the sorcerer must ask the corpse his name. If the corpse regains his strength before the question is asked or answered, then the sorcerer will never be able to master it and the draugr will kill him.

‘The draugr’s nostrils and mouth will bubble with grave-froth and this the sorcerer must lick off with his own tongue and place a drop of his own blood in the corpse’s mouth. Then great strength will come upon the draugr and he will attack the sorcerer and wrestle with him. If the sorcerer wins, the draugr must do his every bidding, but if the draugr wins, he will drag the sorcerer back down into death with him. It is an extremely brave or an extraordinarily bitter man who would risk raising the corpse of an adult man like this one, who would have enormous power. Most sorcerers fear to raise anyone except children whose strength they can master. Whoever raised the corpse of the drowned fisherman must have had a good reason for needing a grown man to do his bidding.’

‘Who?’ Ari asks. ‘Who would do such an evil thing?’

I am certain I know, but I will not tell the boy. It is the worst of crimes to poison the young with hatred.

Ari draws up his knees and clasps his arms tightly around them, staring into the flames of my cooking fire. ‘I heard my grandfather speak of a nightstalker that was sent by a jealous neighbour to terrorize a blacksmith and his family. He arrived one night as a stranger seeking shelter. They offered him their hospitality for they didn’t know what he was. But soon he made their lives a torment. He turned their winter stores of smoked meat rancid and the dried fish rotten. He caused every iron tool the blacksmith fashioned to crack, and every horseshoe he made to lame the horse it was nailed to until the whole neighbourhood was furious with the blacksmith and refused to bring their horses to him. My grandfather said the nightstalker kept the whole family constantly awake with his shrieking and singing of drunken songs, but he wouldn’t leave. Then, when they finally realized what he was, the blacksmith and his brothers circled him with sharp knives so he couldn’t escape, then they struck off his head with a great axe and burned the body.’

‘I know that the draugr in this cave has been conjured to do far worse than break tools or spoil stores. It is not animals he has been sent to destroy, Ari, but men.’

It pains me to frighten the lad, but I must make him understand why I am about to ask him to undertake a task for me that will place him in such danger.

Ari moans and brings his fists up over his head. ‘It’s all my fault. I should have let him die on the track. The Danes were right to attack him. We must kill him now, before he regains his strength. Cut off his head and burn the body, like my grandfather said, that’s the only way to destroy him.’

Ari struggles to his feet and pulls the knife from his belt.

‘No, Ari!’ I shout. ‘No, don’t hurt him. He must live.’

But the lad takes no notice of me. Although I can see he is terrified, I know by the hard set of his jaw he is resolved to see it through. He thinks it is the only way to undo the harm he has done. He starts across the floor of the cave, his knife raised high in both hands.

‘If you spill one drop of his blood, Ari, we will curse you to the grave and beyond.’

He ignores me, and I know that even if I utter a curse it will not stop him. But just as he reaches the man, there is a great clicking and whirring. A dense cloud of black beetles rises into the air and buzzes around Ari, dashing their sharp wings against his face over and over again. He flails his arms wildly, trying to beat them away. The knife flies from his hands as he staggers blindly across the cave.

‘Sit down, Ari! Sit and they will leave you.’

But so great is his panic that I have to shout twice more before I can persuade him to crouch down on the ground.

He kneels, hunched over, covering his head with his arms. The beetles fall back to the floor and scuttle back into the cracks in the rock.

Ari sits trembling for several minutes before he finally manages to find his voice again. ‘Eydis, I … I don’t understand. Why did you stop me? Why do you want this creature of hell to live?’

‘We don’t, Ari. We swear to you we would give our lives to see him destroyed, but for now he must live. His spirit has left his body. If the body is destroyed while the spirit is absent from it, his spirit will remain among the living and there will be no way to banish it. Not even the sorcerer who conjured up the corpse from the dead will be able to send the spirit back to the other world. The spirit will be capable of doing as much harm as the draugr itself, maybe more. Until the spirit returns to the body, we cannot risk destroying the corpse.’

Ari raises his head, despair etched into his face. ‘Then what can we do? Tell me what to do to put things right.’

‘Listen to me, Ari, the corpse is growing weaker. Soon it will be too weak for the spirit to return. We must heal the body. We have a jar of the fox fat we need and the dried herbs, but there is one ingredient, the most important, we do not possess. We need to prepare some mummy.’

The boy looks blank, as well he might. The ingredient is too costly for a hireling like him ever to have seen, never mind used.

‘Mummy is the render from a human corpse. It is one of the most powerful physics there is. The merchants bring a little in from Germany for the wealthy Danes, but it is costly, far beyond what most farmers could ever hope to pay, even if there were any for sale.’

A look of apprehension crosses the boy’s face. ‘You want me to steal some … from a Dane?’

‘No, lad. Even if we could discover who had some on his shelves, we could not risk you breaking into the house of a Dane. You would be caught and hanged without question. No, we must make it ourselves. But to do that we must have a corpse, or rather the head of one, for it is the render from the head that is the most powerful … Ari, listen to me carefully, we need you to break open a grave. You must choose the grave of someone not too long dead, so that some of the flesh and brains will still remain. You must cut off the head and bring it to me.’

He gags and the blood drains from his face so swiftly I fear he is about to faint.

‘Surely there must be something else that would heal him?’ he begs. ‘A root … a herb? It doesn’t matter how rare it is, only tell me what to look for and I promise I’ll search every mountain and valley. I won’t rest until I find it.’

‘Ari, believe me, I would not ask you to do such a thing if there was any other physic that would work.’

‘But to open a grave!’

‘If we cannot heal the corpse, then this man’s spirit will continue to serve the master who conjured it. To go to such lengths to raise a draugr, Ari, must mean whoever did this is planning great evil. Who knows how many men, women and children this spirit will drag down into the grave before his work is finished?’

The lad nods, his brow creased in anguish. I can see he is steeling himself to the task out of guilt for what he has unwittingly unleashed. I loathe myself for putting him through this, but there is no other way and no one else I can ask.

‘Ari, you must find the skull of a dog and place it in the grave so that it will placate the spirit of the man or woman and stop them seeking vengeance. But you must do this soon, Ari, time is running out. If we leave it too late …’

Ari lumbers to his feet and stumbles across to the passage.

‘I … I won’t fail, Eydis. I promise I won’t fail,’ he says, but he does not turn around and look at me.

‘Ari, take great care. Don’t let anyone catch you.’

The Lutherans care little for the dead. They say no Masses for their souls, neither do they anoint the corpses, nor sprinkle holy water on the graves. They do not even lay food or drink on the graves to welcome the spirits of the dead back on All Hallows’ Eve. But if they were to discover anyone attempting to open a grave they would accuse them of stealing bodies for the black arts and would hang the man or drown the woman, even if there was no proof they had removed anything from the corpse.

Ari clambers out of the cave with the heaviness of an old man. It is as if his youth has vanished in a single breath.

Laughter crackles from my sister’s lips, then stops abruptly.

‘So, Eydis, now you make a grave robber of the boy. My master would be proud of you. He has a great talent for dark arts. He has studied long and hard to acquire his knowledge and he will use all he has learned, you can be sure of that, for he has a passion, my master, a hatred burning him up. Ambition, all-consuming ambition is a goblet of acid that he daily drains to the last scalding drop. He would be delighted that you are going to such lengths to help him achieve what he desires, that you are taking such pains to cure my corpse.

‘But, Eydis, you must have realized that all your tender efforts will be wasted. I won’t return to my own corpse. I like being in Valdis’s body. I feel so close to you, my sweet sister. It is lonely being dead, so lonely. Can you imagine what it’s like lying down there among the bitter, angry dead, in cold black water, the grave mould slowly creeping across your tongue? I won’t go back.’

The moon is rising. Death is riding. Eydis, Eydis.
He chants the words like a mocking child.

I try to ignore the taunt, though the tone of the sing-song voice makes my flesh crawl. ‘Fridrik raised you. He placed his bitterness on your tongue and his hatred in your mouth. But understand this. However strong you are, we are stronger. We will not let you live in her. We will not let you use her to destroy countless innocent lives.’

Eydis, Eydis, sister mine, the grave is cold, but we shall lie together and you shall kiss my rotting lips all through the days of the dead and into the darkness beyond.

He laughs, and I feel a strange tingling between my thighs and fingers rubbing my breast, though no hands are touching me.

My sister’s head rears up towards my face, and her dead lips part. ‘Caress me, Eydis. Kiss your master.’

I turn my head sharply away, but I cannot restrain the hands that are invisible. I cannot stop the fingers probing me, stroking me, for it is like trying to push away an icy wind. I roll myself into a ball, trying to repel him with my mind, but I cannot escape from his loathsome touch.

‘You will surrender yourself to me, Eydis. Sooner or later, you will let me enter you too.’