The Hallowed Isle Book Two (2 page)

As the boy started to ease around it, the wind gave him a sudden push that propelled him the rest of the way inside. He fell to his knees, blinking at the darkness.

“Child, you are wet through! Take off your shoes—you are already making a puddle on the floor.”

The words were harsh, but the tone was not. Hæthwæge had been Oesc's nurse when he was little, and knew that he was used to her scoldings.

The fire flared in the draft, showing her a boy whose hands and feet seemed too big for his thin frame, his fair hair plastered dark and flat by the rain. She took up a cloak and wrapped it around him. He sank down on the three-legged stool beside the fire, nose wrinkling at the smell of wet wool as its heat began to absorb the moisture from his clothes.

Hæthwæge took up her spindle again and began, humming softly and watching him from the corners of her long eyes, to spin. Oesc eyed her curiously, knowing that a wicce's spinning was sometimes more than yarn.

“It is black wool and white,” Hæthwæge answered his unvoiced question, “carded together. Opposites entwined balance the magic.”

“What do you use it for?”

“For healing, mostly. I can use this yarn to take a sick man's measure and seal it with a drop of his blood. Then I bring it home and sing over it, and the magic works as well to heal as if the man were here.”

To heal, or, of course, to harm. . . . Those hanks of yarn measured trust as well. In the dozen years she had lived with the Myrgings, Hæthwæge had treated almost everyone in the king's household. She glanced at the boxes and sacks crammed into the space above the boxbed and around the room, trying to remember how many twists of grey yarn she had stored there.

“Can you use the measure to change my grandfather's mood?” Oesc said suddenly.

The twirling spindle stilled. “Has he beaten you again?”

Oesc shook his head. “I almost wish he had. He talks like one doom-fated, and blames it on me. Is it true, Hæthwæge? Is that why my father never came back for me?”

For a moment she considered him. She had known that one day he would ask her this question, and understood as well how careful she must be in her reply, so as not to alter the twinings of wyrd and will.

“Doom-fated you are, and so is Eadguth, and so is every man, all the more when they are god-descended, the children of kings. Eadguth traces his line to Ing the son of Mannus, but your father's family comes of Woden himself. When you were born, I cast the runes, and told your grandfather that he must lift you in his arms and give you a name.” She fed out more yarn from the distaff and set the spindle to turning once again.

Oesc nodded. No doubt he had heard the maids gossiping when they thought he could not hear. Until the head of the family accepted the child, it had no legal existence. Her throat ached with pity for the boy whom she had taken as an infant from his dying mother's side, sensing his potential, and impelled by her god. She could not leave it there.

“I told him that you were the hope of his house, that if he gave you to the wolves, it was not Octha's, but his own line that would fail. And yet I do not see you sitting in Eadguth's high seat here. You will have a kingdom, but it lies elsewhere. The rune that goes before you is Sigel, the sun-road that leads to victory.”

“Does my father know?” Oesc asked sullenly.

“A message was sent, but even I cannot tell if it ever found him. He has been fighting in Britannia. Perhaps he felt you would be safer here. And remember, the wandering shope who sang at last year's Yule feast told us that Uthir the British king had taken him prisoner.”

“Perhaps he's dead . . .” muttered the boy.

Hæthwæge shook her head. “I have
seen
the two of you together. Your time will come.”

Oesc sighed and let the blanket slip from his shoulders. His damp clothes were beginning to steam in the heat of the fire.

“Well, if it's not my fault, why does the king lay the blame on me?”

“Do not judge him too harshly. He is an old man. Since his own grandfather was slain by Offa of Angeln on the banks of the Fifeldor things have gone badly for the Myrgings. Now he sees his land being eaten away by flood and storm. When he goes to his fathers, the shopes will not sing that the harvests were good in his reign, and no one will lay offerings at his grave. Of all dooms, that one weighs hardest on a king.”

As Hæthwæge played out more wool the thread broke suddenly, sending the spindle rolling across the floor toward the rune-carved spear that leaned against the wall, its head shrouded in a piece of cloth.

Hah, Old Man!
she thought,
Has the time come for you to take a hand?
For a moment it seemed to her that a faint radiance played about the spear. A dozen years ago it had been entrusted to her, at the same time as her visions had instructed her to take service with the Myrging king.

Oesc bent to retrieve the spindle, his troubled gaze meeting her own, and carefully set it beside her stool.

“My grandfather hates me, and my father doesn't even know my name,” he said bitterly. “Who will protect me?”

Hæthwæge twitched, feeling the first brush of power against her mind, subtle as the draught that stirred the fire.

“Look to the father of your fathers,” she answered, her own voice sounding strange in her ears. Sight darkened as more words came to her. “Not the god of the land, but the one who hunts on the storm. He is coming—do you hear him?” She pointed northward, head cocked, listening.

The fire hissed, and above that came the sound of the rising wind, gusting through the branches of the trees beyond the palisade with a sound like surf on some distant shore. And beyond that . . . deep as her own heartbeat, the drumming of hooves.

Oesc's voice came to her as if from a great distance. “I don't understand—”

“Come—” The wicce rose from her stool. Without needing to think about it, she took the spear from its corner and started toward the door.

She could sense the boy's confusion, but to her spirit the hoofbeats were growing ever closer. If the boy's presence had been a scent on the breeze, what was coming now was the wind itself, a storm of terror and delight that could whirl consciousness itself away.

Hæthwæge pulled open the door. Wind swirled around her, insistent as a lover, plucking the pins from her hair. She felt the spearshaft vibrate in her hand and laughed.

I am coming, I am coming, my lord and my love
. . . .

Laughing, she walked into the storm to meet the god, in that moment scarcely caring if the boy followed her.

Outside, dusk was falling fast. Oesc splashed through the puddles to catch up with Hæthwæge, raising his arm to shield his eyes from the driving rain. It came in flurries, as if the storm clouds were being broken up by the force of the wind. Head high, her hair streaming out behind her and with every moment growing darker in the rain, the wicce strode across the yard to the eastern gate. Oesc knew her as a woman just past middle life, her shoulders rounded and her body thickened by the years. But now she looked taller, and young, and by that he understood she was already in trance.

Below the mound that raised the village above the floods stretched a level land of wood and marsh and field, dotted and channeled by pond and stream. To the west, a little light shafted below the scudding clouds, touching the Law-Oak and the Field of Assembly where the tribal moots were held with a sickly yellow glow. In the distance he caught the pewter gleam of the sea. That last light gleamed on water that was closer as well, for from here he could see that the slow curve of the river had become a crescent grin of silver water that with every moment nibbled away more of the sodden fields. Monster-gate, they called it, but now it was not the etins who lived in the North Sea but the waters themselves that were devouring the land.

Beyond the palisade that sheltered the workshops and the king's hall, the long-houses of the villagers clustered closely along the slope. Oesc saw Hæthwæge disappearing between the last two and hurried to follow her. To the east stretched the home pasture, but on the west side, the marshes came nearly to the base of the mound. A narrow causeway, in this season half underwater, led through it. Picking his way carefully, Oesc followed the wisewoman. He could guess where she was heading now. In the heart of the boglands lay the dark pool where the Myrgings made their offerings under the staring eyes of the carven gods. Except at the time of sacrifice, most folk avoided it, but Oesc had gone there once or twice with Hæthwæge when she was gathering herbs.

Though the rain had diminished, by the time he caught up with the wicce, water from swinging branches had drenched him as thoroughly as the storm. Together they pushed through the screen of alder and willow that edged the pool, and at that moment the sun set and the clouds closed in once more, as if the mists of Nibhel had overwhelmed the world.

The wind stilled. Oesc shivered and drew closer to Hæthwæge. Reason told him that the horse whose hide and head were suspended on a framework of poles above the water was quite dead, but the water had risen, and it seemed now to be standing in the pool.

“What is happening?” Instinctively he dropped his voice to a whisper.

She turned, and this time she saw him, though her pupils were still dilated so that her eyes seemed to open on darkness.

“Wait.” A tremor ran through her body. “Soon, he comes.” With trembling fingers she unwound the cloth from about the head of the spear. The smoky stone glimmered in the shadows as if it shone with its own light.

Faint with distance, he heard a long horn-call. The raven feathers tied to the shaft fluttered in a sudden wind. Then came the hoofbeats. Men were riding on the wooden causeway that led through the marshes, he thought, but the sound grew rapidly louder. No horse could gallop safely on the rain-slick logs, nor could they cross other than in single file. What he heard now was the sound of many horses—or was it thunder? Was that the shrieking of the wind or the bitter answer of many horns?

He could not tell, but the sound sent a chill deep into his body. He crouched at Hæthwæge's feet, wishing he could burrow into the earth for protection. The animal heads spiked upon the offering stakes swayed frantically, and the horsehide heaved above the ruffled waters, straining toward the attenuated images of the gods.

In the next moment the tumult he had heard approaching was upon them. The last of the light had gone; he could make out only a confusion of shadows. Was it his imagination that shaped them into skeletal horses and wild riders who brandished spears or swords, or worse still, into wælcyriges, war-hags riding slavering wolves with serpents for reins. He bit back a cry as a gust of wind sent the horsehide flapping into the air to join them.

He cowered beneath their keening until Hæthwæge's hand on his shoulder made him look up again. The horrors had passed. The shapes that swept above him now, limned in their own light, were of a nobler kind.

“Behold, son of Octha, your fathers of old—Wihtgils, Witta, Wehta, and their sires before them. . . .”

Shaking, Oesc got to his feet and raised his arm in salute. The names rolled on, but he could not hear them. All his being was focused on those luminous shadows, grim or kindly, that looked on him with a considering gaze as if deciding whether he was worthy to continue their line.

And then, though all around them the trees still bowed to the storm, the air above the pool grew heavy with a sense of presence. Oesc remained standing, but he shut his eyes tightly. Whatever was coming now was something he was not yet ready to see. But he could not keep from hearing, though he never knew, then or thereafter, if the words had come to his mind or his ears.

“
So this is the boy
—” a deep voice seemed to say.

“Since his birth I have warded him,” Hæthwæge answered. “When will the future I foretold for him come to be?”

“
That is Verdandi's business. But when that time comes, he will have to choose
. . .”

“What are his choices?”

“
To stay here and live long in a dying land, or to risk all across the water
. . . .”

“But the runes spoke of victory—” the wicce began. That other voice interrupted her.

“
To endure the turning of the seasons is as much a victory as death in battle. The one is the path of Ingvi, but the other is mine. If he chooses Me his name shall be remembered in a new land, and he shall sire kings
.”

“Is that your will, lord?” Now it was Hæthwæge's voice that trembled.

“
I will what shall be, but it is not for me to choose how it shall come to pass—that lies with the boy, and with you
.”

Oesc had the abrupt sense of being the focus of attention, like a mouse trapped between a wolf's paws. He scrunched his eyes shut even more tightly. For a moment more he was held, then the pressure was released with a hint of laughter.

“
I do not force you
,” came that whisper from within, “but the Norns will force the choice upon you, my son, and soon.”

“I have chosen you, High One, since I was young—” Hæthwæge said then.

“
It is so, nor have I ever been far away
.”

If there was more, it was not meant for Oesc's ears. He sank down at the woman's feet, and only afterward, when the god and those he led had passed, did he realize that his face was wet, not with rain, but with tears.

The wood seemed very silent. Oesc stood up, wiping his eyes. Then he stiffened, hearing once more the sounds of hoofbeats and horns.

But this was no spectral hunt—he could tell the difference now. Those were mortal horses whose hoofbeats he heard ringing on the wet logs, and mortal lungs behind those plaintive horns.

“There are riders, Hæthwæge! Riders on the causeway!” he exclaimed. “Hurry, we must get back to the hall.”

She nodded, shrouding the spearhead once more, and he saw her face still luminous with memory. But as she turned her awareness back to the human world the lines deepened in her skin and she became merely mortal once more.