Ursus of Ultima Thule (19 page)

And Roke, who had finished with a prolonged silent spasm, lifted his well-worn leathers and sniffed at them, threw them down with a loud snort. “They have a half-winter’s stink!” he said. “I shall hang them in a good safe tree to air well till we return, and my advice as friend and brother is for all of thee to do the same: else I must walk upwind. Yes! Naked I shall go, but I shall not stink — What ask, nain-fellow? — But although it be good to be feeling the clean wind all over clean me for a change, have I not got some clean garments of pounded bark-cloth?” He muttered and turned as though to go and open his pack, then turned again.

He faced the young nain and stared at him as though trying to think of either answer or question. Then his skin reddened until the Star Bear almost vanished and the red stain swept down until it vanished in the tangle of blonde hair. Then it ebbed. “I laughed, nainfellow, because there be a-many who deem me dead.” And he told him why and how. “I laughed because until now I had very much doubted the fact of my dying, but until now I was perhaps not all sure, do ‘ee see, shagfellow? And I laughed because I now know that I be in no wise dead, and I laughed to learn that though I did stink, it was a live man’s stink and not a dead one’s!”

He found his clean clothes, unrolled and stepped into them. They were all marked in root and berry-dye with a multitude of bright signs and sigile, suns and moons and stars and leaping stags and such-like. He patted and smoothed them, then straightened up until he was again for true Tall Roke. No trace of slouch or strain seemed to remain. And something had rolled off his soul as well.

“Now,” he said, placing one hand upon the others’ shaggy shoulder. “Do thee and me and two others follow the Bear and his witchery-hide-map and let us on to Wizardland and there us shall persuade mayhap several sages that they be n’t dead, either!”

The Bear had also benefited by the several days of crouching in the steam-hut whilst water was dashed on red-hot stones and then rushing, streaming with sweat and sweated-loose winter-dirt, into the river. They had beaten each other with small bundles of twigs and sluiced themselves with soaproot, rubbed themselves and each other with sand and scraped their skins with flat stones and then they had done it all over again. The bearskin had also been subject to a milder cleansing, and now dangled, inside-out over Arn’s back,
flip, flap
it said as he stalked along. Had the Bear also benefited by anything else which had occurred by the river? Certainly he had benefited by the second sounding of All-Caller. As for more than that —

But the flapping of the bearhide reminded him of another hide, and he drew out the map the nains had painted for him. There was the green wiggle and fish which meant
river;
they had passed that. Ahead was the sign for
fire
, repeated several times: how far ahead and exactly what this meant, he did not know. He understood that there were
hills …
or was that, were they
mountains?
Did it at all matter? — it might. And over here,
this
odd sign meant
wizards
.

But, this one, this one,
this
one — ? He slowed his pace and let the others catch up with him, then asked. He had expected that neither Corm nor Roke would know, and, indeed, though he had tried to explain the notion of a map to them, neither could form any other idea than that the hide was painted with witchery-signs: potent, yes: but not to be understood by them. Thus he was not surprised that when he indicated the sigil with his thumb the two of them merely breathed more deeply, and then looked at him.

His old uncle’s dark brows, flecked with a few writhing white hairs, seemed themselves to gaze, as well as his eyes. He looked intently at the indicated sign. He said, “I may have known. I do not know now. But even those I know are not painted just as I would paint them, these be nain-paints, my sister’s grandson.”

Eër-derred-derred-eër looked long and looked close. “It says to me that once I did see it.” He paused and looked more and, as he inclined his head, seemed indeed to listen as well as look. “It says no more,” he concluded.

Arn sighed. Roke had thought of something. “Bab, why does thee not build a hut and make witchery over this sign, then?” And Arn made a pleased sound. But Bab slowly and emphatically shook his head.

“I do not know this sign,” he repeated. “If I draw it, I may give it power. If I knew it, then I would know, for a first thing, how to keep power over it while I worked with it; and, if I knew it, then I would be able to obtain power from it … perhaps. But to do witchery-work with a strange and unknown sign? No, Bear, and no, Roke: this is not done.”

Roke drew away from the map, and, indeed, he would never draw near whenever it was open, again. And so they went on. The trees now were larch and spruce and aspen — not, as he had first thought, birch. And this once more put him in mind of the undines, and he wondered again what would have happened if Bab, alarmed at his not having returned by late afternoon, had not taken the major measure of telling Corm to blow the great fey horn. Twice, now, had it — they — saved him. He thought about this as they crossed the low, rolling hills carpeted with spring flowers; and then his mind fell into a reverie and he was not really aware what he was thinking of at all. Perhaps, then, he, least of any was prepared for that incident which brought from the nain a grunt of surprise, from Bab an exclamation of astonishment, from Roke a cry of alarm, and from Corm a wail of sheer pain.

Corm had set his foot down on it; he had been going slow, perhaps even dawdling, for he did not casually bring his foot up to take another slow step but stood there — not even holding it in his hand — stood there awkwardly on one foot, the other merely suspended. And he pointed, his wail ending abruptly, subsiding into a hiss of anguish.

For where his foot had been was a small smoldering place in the grass. ‘Oh, it hints!” he exclaimed. And hopped on one foot a pace to sit down and nurse his burn. They gathered round, partly to console and think what comfort they might administer, partly to examine this oddity. Their shadows fell across the tiny spot, and in that darkness they saw a small red eye of fire. Roke was first to speak.

“Make water on it,” he said, “same as though ‘twere a cut, for a man’s own water has healing salts.” This was customary folk-wisdom, all nodded, finding comfort in the known in face of the unknown. Roke helped Corm to his good foot, and, the younger man, leaning against him for support, began to carry out the suggestion; Roke himself followed his own counsel, but aimed his urine on the burning place. It hissed as though itself in pain, it steamed. And Bab rummaged in his bag of medicines and came up with a small horn of some fat a long-ago winter’s night prepared with herbs. He murmured as he wiped Corm’s foot dry with a tuft of grass and with his finger he gently spread the salve upon the already-reddening place, and fastened a very soft strip of bark around the foot from instep to sole; and fastened it so, deftly.

“Tis odd, tis odd,” he murmured. “Tis very odd.”

And then, Corm placing his weight upon the foot with only a slight grimace and they starting off once more, Arnten, pointing, said, “And not that one ‘odd’ alone: look — ”

Ahead of them yet another wisp of smoke ascended.

They came up to it very cautiously, yet not so close as to the first one, yet it needed not that closeness, for it was somewhat larger. “It be a fire-ring,” the young nain said. And sure enough, it was not a mere spot or small full-circle, but a true ring, and in the midst of the burning was an unburned core of grass.

“The grass is not dry,” said Arnten.

“Well for us that it is not,” his old uncle declared. “Else all might burn, and us with it.” And they shuddered, remembering the great grass fires which sometimes swept the dry plains, driving men and beasts and birds before it in full terror and flight. Then, seeing Roke again fumbling at himself, “Nay, let us press on, thee cannot hope to piddle out every unsought smolder-fire we may meet — ”

They laughed, perhaps more than the wit of it deserved, and they walked on, walked on faster. Then before their eyes and even while they scanned the turfy grass, they saw the next circle spring up into fire before their gaze. One united sound of dismay they made. Corm, as though without thinking, made a twisting movement with his index finger and began a childhood chant familiar to them all … perhaps even to the nain.
“Ringy-ringy-ringworm, firey-firey-fireworm, little-worm, big-worm, out-thee-GO — !”

At GO, he flung his finger out as though flicking something away. And they all solemnly spat three times, as though they were indeed children at solemn play trying to exorcize an itch.

“May it be to some avail, and soon,” Bab said. “But let us not wait here to see, for while we have waited, there has another sprung up — ” They started off at great pace, going off their straight-intended path to avoid this newer and, alas, greater circle of smoke and fire. And while they walked so quickly they, with one unspoken accord and one unrehearsed movement, looked back over their shoulders, as though to see if safety might be had by return.

Yet behind them as before them the gouts of fire on several sides were springing up, not less behind than before. They skirted this newest, nearest burning ring, and glanced away from it with some wordless noises of satisfaction, but pleasure was short-lived indeed: for whilst they were circling one circle, all round and round about them another one had been growing.

They broke into a run, they raced as never Arnten had remembered racing, not even when he had fled from the sudden mob in his home hamlet; and they did not pause, they leaped over the low-smouldering loop; and landed, half-stumbling, half-falling, on the yonder side. For a moment, at least, safety.

But fire-loop was now crossing and intersecting fire-loop, and though they kept on running, kept on jumping and kept on leaping, there was no more sign of reaching unburning land than there seemed to be of the medicine-chant’s having had any success. Arnten’s pack humped and bumped and flapped against his side, and he made a ducking gesture so as to pass the belt over his head and so let the pack drop and so be rid of it and so run on the faster and the better: in drawing the pack up past his face, or in drawing his face down past his pack, his nostrils were met with a wet and musty smell, almost a stink, a reek of something which was not fish, though for an instant he thought of that; nor yet snake, though for a second he was reminded of that. There was something very important, urgent, in that brief reek. His mind said: Rim! His feet said: On! His heart said: Woe!

But his nose said, Stop!

And he stopped, and surrounded as he was by heat and by reek and by smoke and by the smoking shadows of death, down he sat him. He heard say, moaning, “Arnten has fallen — ”

Roke: “Arnten? Back, then, back to him — ”

The nain came trotting and came shambling back, not fearing now to let himself be seen on all his four limbs, his long arms, knuckles to ground, aiding him as though legs; the nain made his way with surprising swiftness, and he took hold and Arnten flung his arm off — “Eh, a-be’s daft, ‘s brains do turn from fear and fire!” the nain bellowed, and made as though to catch him up and carry him off. Arnten, burrowing in his pack, delving and tugging, brought up his sweat-streaked face, forced himself to speak.

“I am not — ” he panted. He thrust up a hand to avoid Roke’s lunging arm.

“My mind is well — ” he ducked to escape his uncle’s withered paw.

“Don’t leave me — wait, wait — for you — for you as well for me — here — here — here — and here — ”

At full long last he had it from his pack, he had the packet, he had it unfastened, he spread it out, unfolding it. He gestured, he tried to explain, his voice breaking. Half they would seize and drag him, half they strove to get his meaning. Half they would have fled and saved themselves, half they were full loathe to do so. And it was, as might have been expected, Bab, who first comprehended.

Who stooped, snatched up, sat himself down. Who cried, doing so, “That sign … that witchery sign … Nay, bind your feet, all! Bind your feet! Wrap these strips of skin round about your feet! These be the cutting from that beast back there, from that dragon-beast, from that salamander …”

And they sat themselves down, though death was burning brightly all round about them. And they gravely wrapped around their feet the wet and cold skin of the salamander, the dragon, the dead dragon, finding their life in his death. And they arose, and with one’s hand on the other’s shoulder, coughing and stumbling in the smoke, they strode yet safely across the burning rings. And nothing of them did burn.

Wizardland looked fey indeed.

It seemed as though many great rivers, or one great river which had shifted its channel repeatedly, had coursed through the land over endless ages. Eroded cliffs, gaunt escarpments, high and low plateaus and buttes were the up-and-down features of the terrain. Grey gravel crunched under their feet, and then there was grey sand and then smooth grey pebbles, which were hard for feet to find a purchase on, rolling and sliding. This gave way to wide beds of coarse red sand and beyond that the red sand was finer and then their trudging, stumbling feet sent up clouds of red dust which bit into nostrils and throat. The way led between huge black boulders beneath beetling black cliffs and nut-sized black pebbles graded slowly into seed-sized grains of black sand which hissed beneath their feet. After a while there were streaks of gold in the blackness, and then streaks of blackness in the floor of golden sands. Black and white and gold and black and red, over and over again.

But of the river or rivers which had, ages after ages, rolled and roared and ground and eaten into the tortured surface of the land, eaten their way deeper and deeper, eaten the rock into gravel and the gravel into sand, washing away every trace of soil, leaving not even a pocket of true earth — of these mighty and age-long waters, not a drop remained. The courses of Wizardland were dry, long dry.