The Falcons of Fire and Ice

CHAPTER Nine



The king of Persia once owned a white falcon worth more to him than his own palace. He cast the falcon after a crane, but when he drew close to where his bird had made the kill, he discovered that the falcon had slain an eagle instead of the crane. To honour his falcon’s courage and valour the king had a lavish dais erected for her to perch on and placed a miniature golden crown on her head, then he ordered that the falcon’s head be struck from her body, because she had killed her sovereign lord.

In the same manner a king of England cast off his falcon, but before the falcon could seize its prey, a wild eagle, king of all the birds, stooped down upon it. The falcon dived to the ground and hid itself among a flock of sheep, and when the eagle thrust its head into the flock to find the falcon, the falcon struck the eagle hard on the head and killed it. All the knights and noblemen who rode with the king cheered and praised the brave little bird. But the king of England, hearing their praises, had the falcon hanged as a salutary lesson for anyone who might dare to dream of rebellion against the Crown.





Isabela



To mount a horse like a falconer – a falconer always mounts from the right side and with the right foot, because they hold the bird on the left fist.



I couldn’t believe what Hinrik was saying – we were allowed to stay here for only two weeks. I had just fourteen short days in which to capture the gyrfalcons! Surely, the boy had made a mistake. He’d used a wrong word. He meant months not weeks. But he was adamant, and I could see by the grin on the face of the official that it must be true. The man would hardly have advised us to go home otherwise. It was all I could do not to howl aloud with frustration and misery, but I couldn’t afford to let myself sink into despair.

I swallowed hard and tried to think. When my father and I had gone to the plains in Portugal to trap migrating hawks and falcons we had caught a dozen in just a few days. I only had to capture a pair. I must surely be able to do that in two weeks. And in any case I couldn’t afford to stay here longer than that. With every day that passed the shadow of the pyre crept closer to my father. Even before the year was up, weakened by hunger, he could die of prison fever in those fetid dungeons. And what if they were torturing him, trying to force him to confess to killing the falcons, trying to make him betray others … No, no! Even two weeks was too long. I had to find those birds now – at once.

As we walked away from the quayside we clambered up on to the rough track that wound between the little turf huts. Racks of dried fish lined the upper slopes, but their rotting guts paved the path, along with mutton bones, offal and every kind of excrement, which was trodden into the dirt. The smoke from the cooking fires stank of burning dung, charred fish bones and scorched seaweed. It made my eyes sting. Vítor, Marcos and Fausto were all holding kerchiefs over their noses and looked as if they were about to vomit, but Hinrik was grinning and sniffing the air. To him it must have been the smell of home, but I remembered the stench of another fire, a fire that smelt of burning flesh and death. I shuddered.

Then I heard it. Krery-krery-krery – it was the cry of a hunting gyrfalcon. I frantically scanned the skies. Only gulls wheeled over the dark blue water. But even as I strained to find the call again above the screams of the seabirds, I knew I wouldn’t hear it. The cry of the falcon had come not from the skies, but from somewhere deep inside me like a second heartbeat, or a tiny bubble of memory that rose and burst in my head. I gazed out across the bay towards the distant mountains, their tops hidden in the swirling grey clouds. Somehow in that moment I knew that’s where I must go. If the white falcons existed anywhere on this island that is where I would find them. But it would take days to walk there – days I did not have.

Fausto clapped a hand on Hinrik’s shoulder. ‘Now, my lad, you can start earning the money we paid for you by finding us a decent inn for the night. Even in this goats’ byre there must be one that doesn’t stink like a piss-pot and serves a good supper. My belly is howling for some fresh, juicy meat after all that dried-up old salt pork.’

Vítor pushed the boy aside. ‘No, we can’t seek lodgings here. That clerk will be watching every move we make, or at least his spies will.’ He jerked his head behind him, to where three men stood in the shadow of a hut, their gaze fixed on us.

‘And there was me thinking that now you’d confessed to being a Lutheran, you and that popinjay were best friends, or was that another of your lies?’ Marcos spat out the words loaded with venom.

Vítor shrugged. ‘Obviously, I had to tell him something. I couldn’t very well say I’d come here to map this island, he’d have me arrested as a spy.’

‘In that case I’m sorry that I didn’t tell them,’ Marcos said. ‘He would have entertained us like kings if we handed him a spy.’

‘Or arrested you as accomplices,’ Vítor said with a granite smile. ‘I think you will find they don’t trouble themselves with minor inconveniences like evidence before they hang a man on this isle. You should be grateful to me, at least it got him on our side long enough to let us land.’

I knew from the weeks aboard the ship that quarrels like this could occupy them for hours, but for once I was grateful. The men were so busy glaring at one another that I could slip away unnoticed. I had already seen a man ambling across the track ahead of us on a tiny, shaggy horse, leading half a dozen small horses who crowded behind him, their bodies pressed tightly together and their heads resting on each other’s backs. If I could ride, I could reach those mountains in a quarter of the time it would take me on foot.

I moved closer to Hinrik, and lowered my voice to a whisper. ‘That man, do you think he would sell me a horse? Can you ask him?’

As I hoped, Vítor, Fausto and Marcos were so busy snarling at one another that they didn’t even notice the boy and me walking off. The horse-owner glanced at me several times as Hinrik explained what I wanted, but his face told me nothing of what he might be thinking. Finally he waved his hand over the small herd, inviting me to choose. I had already studied the stocky, shaggy little beasts and pointed to a pretty honey-coloured mare, which, unlike some of the others, showed no sign of lameness. I urged Hinrik to hurry and negotiate a price, but it seemed that no business was ever done in haste in Iceland. Finally, the horse-owner seemed satisfied, and I was just about to claim my beast and mount when to my dismay I saw the others hurrying towards us along the track.

‘Well done, my lad,’ Fausto said. ‘Horses – just what we need, since Vítor is so determined on not letting us rest here.’

He glared resentfully at Vítor. Then he stared in dismay at the little horses. Not one of them was bigger than thirteen hands and he was a tall, broad man.

‘Ask this man where he keeps his larger mounts. Those couldn’t carry us more than a mile.’

Hinrik answered without bothering to translate. ‘They can carry you easy for miles at the tölt.’

‘At the what?’ Fausto said.

Hinrik wrinkled his nose as he struggled to explain. ‘You know, fast. Not as fast as a gallop … but you will not be thrown about like a trot.’ He shrugged at our blank faces. ‘You will see. You want to buy five more, one for the packs and for me too?’

‘Of course for you too, you little maggot,’ Fausto said. ‘We paid good money for you. You’re coming with us. We want our money’s worth.’

Our bundles were stacked in a heap, together with some wind-dried fish and a small iron cooking pot which had been much patched and repaired. The owner was reluctantly persuaded to load the beast for us, but not until he received yet another coin for his trouble. He laid two fresh turfs on the horse’s sides and over these tied a flimsy wooden frame, studded with pegs, fastening it under the creature’s belly. Then, using lengths of wool knotted like fishing nets, he wound them round the pegs and over our bundles.

As the man worked, Fausto peered dubiously at the frame. ‘This wool won’t hold for long. Have you nothing stronger? Rope?’

The Icelander briefly lifted his head, frowning up at the seabirds drifting in the grey sky, as if he thought the question had come from them. Then he resumed his work, knotting the strands of wool so slowly that it seemed it would take the whole winter for him to finish.

A crowd of adults and children had gathered a little way off and stood silently watching us, their eyes following our every move, like a clowder of wild-eyed cats hungrily watching a flock of sparrows. With a groan of frustration at the slow pace of the Icelander’s painstaking work, Fausto elbowed him aside and seized the strands of wool, winding them rapidly several times in a loop over the frame and under the horse’s belly.

‘Come on, let’s go while we’ve still a chance of reaching the next village before dark. I’ve no desire to spend the night sleeping in the open in this purgatory.’

Fortunately my skirts were full enough to allow me to straddle my mount, though it had a very broad back for such a short creature. But the moment I was in the saddle, my horse tried to throw me off and was only stopped by the owner grabbing her head. I moaned, rubbing my knee which was throbbing from where I’d gripped the horse’s sides to prevent myself falling.

‘He says she is called Gilitrutt after the troll-wife,’ Hinrik said, grinning. ‘Let your legs hang. If you squeeze her it will make her bolt. Do not pull on the reins. It makes them gallop.’

‘Then how am I to bring her to a halt, if I can’t rein her in?’

Hinrik shrugged. ‘She will stop … when she wants to.’

The rough track that led away from the village was only wide enough for us to ride single-file, although the horses seemed desperate to walk next to one another and kept trying to squeeze past rocks to get closer together. The boy rode ahead, followed by Marcos and Vítor, who was leading the packhorse behind his own mount. I came next and, behind me, Fausto brought up the rear.

Hinrik led us between great towering mounds of dark soil and rock piled in haphazard layers, like carelessly heaped slices of bread. Broad streams, teeming with swan, duck and grebe, meandered across the valley floor, their waters riffled by the stiff breeze into little peaks and troughs, like a newly ploughed field. Great cushions of grey moss snuggled around the base of jagged black rocks that stuck out of the ground like rows of shark’s teeth, and between the patches of dark, wiry grass were vivid splashes of a strange pink plant I’d never seen before. At the base of the hillsides long stretches of marsh pools shone like broken fragments of mirrors as the light caught them, and white-tufted cotton grass swayed in the wind. Ahead of us in the distance a huge rounded mountain rose into the grey afternoon light, as if it was a sleepy giant curiously watching us tiny creatures crawling towards it.

I heard a deep, croaking pruk-pruk-pruk above me. A pair of ravens was circling round the black rocks up on the hillside, their wings outstretched, gliding on the wind for the pure joy of flying. Suddenly I saw this was not the entrance to purgatory at all, but to heaven. It was the most wildly beautiful place I had ever seen. I half-turned, wanting to share my excitement with my father as I had done so many times when I was a little girl, when he took me with him to trap the wild falcons. But even as I opened my mouth, I realized with a sickening jolt that he was not riding behind me, but lying in a dark dungeon deep beneath the earth. I gazed up at the sky, desperately hoping to hear that cry or see the familiar outline of the gyrfalcon circling above me, but there was no sign of the birds.

I was so intent on searching the skies for the falcons that at first I didn’t see what was happening, until shouts and curses from the men jolted me back. The packhorse which Vítor had been leading behind his own mount had stopped and was jerking its head, trying to pull away from the leading rein. The pack which Fausto had helped to tie to the beast had slipped sideways, so that now all the weight of our bundles and the iron cooking pot hung on her left side. The horse flopped down in the track and tried to rid herself of the irritation by rolling on her back and thrashing violently.

Vítor dismounted and, flinging his reins at Marcos, marched back to try to pull the packhorse up on to her feet. Marcos dismounted too and, holding tightly to both horses, led them forward, looking wildly around for somewhere he might tether them, but there was not a tree or a post anywhere. Hinrik, who had been riding ahead, was plainly oblivious of the commotion behind him and had disappeared around one of the mounds of soil.

Vítor glanced up at Marcos. ‘Hurry up and give me a hand. We’ll have to get this pack off her before we can get her up.’

He tugged at one of the knots in the wool, but it only seemed to make it tighter. Exasperated, he pulled out his knife. ‘I’ll have to cut it.’

Up to then I had kept my seat, but I saw the most useful thing I could do now would be to dismount and help to hold the beasts while the others freed the packhorse. Behind me, Fausto was still mounted too. I half-turned my head and saw his horse drawing level with mine.

‘Can you hold her while I dismount?’ I handed him the reins and, seizing a handful of the horse’s mane, I leaned forward, about to swing my leg over its back, when I felt something hit my horse’s flank, as if someone had kicked the beast hard. She whinnied and sprang forward off the track. Fausto dropped the reins, but before I could grab at them, the horse galloped away with me frantically clutching at her mane. I had lost the stirrups and was desperately trying to keep my seat by gripping her sides tightly with my legs.

Hinrik’s warning flashed through my head. I knew that by pressing the horse’s sides I was only encouraging her to go faster, but I couldn’t help myself. I was only holding on to her mane and I was terrified that if I relaxed my grip with my legs I would be thrown straight on to those sharp, jagged rocks.

As we dashed forward, I coaxed and pleaded with the horse to stop, but she took no more notice of me than she would a fly. I crouched low across her neck, groping for the swinging reins with one hand while I twisted the fingers of my other hand tighter into her mane. I was dimly aware that the ground right in front of us looked flatter and smoother and the vicious black rocks had given way to pools of water. Perhaps I could manage to slide from her back. I would be bruised, but at least I wouldn’t smash my head open on the stones. I felt again the twinge from my injured knee and almost before I’d thought about what I was doing I began to shift my weight to the other side. I couldn’t afford to fall on that leg again.

Without warning the horse staggered, her back legs buckled beneath her. The violent jerk dislodged the precarious hold I had on her and I found myself sliding sideways and backwards. I landed in something soft and at the same moment the horse lashed out wildly with her hooves, kicking and bucking as she tried to free her legs from the sucking mire in which she was caught. I rolled over, covering my head and trying to protect myself. I felt the rush of wind as her hoof passed within a hair’s breadth of my head. Then, with one tremendous heave, she had freed herself and was gone.

My relief lasted barely half a breath. For in the same instant I discovered I was unhurt, I also realized that I was sinking. I was lying sprawled in a pool of warm black mud, but as soon as I tried to push my arms down to prise myself up my hands disappeared into the ooze. I scrabbled around, trying to feel something solid to push against, but there was nothing. Each time I moved, more of the thick, sticky mud welled up over my body and legs, pulling me in deeper. I was in the grip of a giant. I tried to pull one arm free, but dragging it up through the sucking mud was like trying to lift a blacksmith’s anvil in one hand. Blind panic engulfed me and I screamed.

As I twisted around I saw a tall woman standing a few feet away from me. Where she had come from I had no idea, but she looked as old as poor Jorge. For a moment she just looked at me, then turned away and began to pick her way around the edge of the mire. I shouted at her to help, but she didn’t even glance in my direction. I yelled again, certain that she was just going to walk on and leave me to drown.

She halted at the edge of the bog and swiftly untied a long, coarse apron from her waist, then she knelt down and flicked the apron towards me like a whip. I suddenly realized what she was trying to do. I tried to lift my hand to catch the end of it, but I couldn’t pull it from the mud. The edge of the cloth fell near my face, but I couldn’t grasp it. The black mud bubbled against my lips, and in terror I tried to arch my head up and away from it, but that only made me sink deeper.

She pulled the apron back and I could see she meant to throw it again. I heaved my arm up with all my remaining strength and, with a pop, my hand shot free of the mud. But the movement cost me dearly, for even with my head thrown back as far as I could, the mud was oozing into my mouth and nose. I was trying to hold my breath, but my lungs were bursting with pain. I was dimly aware of a cry and felt the edge of the apron whip across my face. I flayed around blindly with my fingers, and then I felt the blessed solidness of the cloth. I clutched it as hard as I could and felt the tension on the cloth as she gently began to tug it towards her. By pulling against the cloth, I managed to wrest my head a few precious inches out of the mud, and lay there coughing and choking.

The woman began to pull steadily. For all her great age she was surprisingly strong, but my hands, slippery with mud, kept losing their hold on the apron, and she was forced to stop until I could struggle to grasp it again. I had not moved more than an inch or two. I was utterly exhausted. My limbs felt like jelly. I didn’t care any more. I just wanted to let go, sink down and down into the soft, warm mud and sleep for ever.

Marcos came running up behind the woman. He stopped a little way off and froze, staring wildly as if he was at a loss to know what to do. The woman half-turned her head and beckoned to him. Still he stood there as if he couldn’t remember how to move.

‘Marcos, help me! Please … help … me!’

The sound of my voice seemed to jerk him into life and he ran forward and crouched down next to the woman. She thrust the end of the apron into his hands.

‘Twist the cloth around your wrists,’ he called to me urgently.

I tried, but my fingers felt like sausages and every movement buried my arms deeper. When he saw that I had grasped it as well as I could, Marcos began to pull. I felt as if my arms were being dragged from their sockets. I willed myself to grip it, even though I knew it was useless.

‘It’s no use … I can’t,’ I wailed.

‘You must, you’re nearly there. Hold on, Isabela. Just hold on!’

Then, with a rapid slither like a newborn lamb sliding out of a ewe, my body burst from the mud and I felt hands clutching my arms and hauling me on to firm ground.

I lay on the grass, too weak even to sit up, mumbling my thanks to him over and over again. I looked around for the woman to thank her too, but she was nowhere to be seen.

‘Are you cold?’ Marcos asked anxiously, and I realized my teeth were chattering, but it was from shock not cold.

‘Mud was warm.’ The strangeness of that had only just occurred to me.

‘It must be that little brook. There’s steam rising from it. Come on, try washing some of that mud off in there.’

He had to support me the few yards to the shallow stream, for my legs repeatedly gave way beneath me as if every drop of strength had been sucked out of my body. I touched the water gingerly. It was blissfully warm. I slipped into it and lay on hot stones on the bed of the stream, letting the water gently trickle over me.

Finally, when I felt strong enough to move again, Marcos helped me out and wrapped his own cloak around me, though it was so long I had to loop it over my arm. I glanced back towards the track. Vítor and Fausto were picking their way towards us around the black rocks. The two men were making slow progress encumbered by our packs, the cooking pot and stockfish, which they now had to carry upon their own backs.

Before they could reach us, I grabbed Marcos’s arm and whispered urgently, ‘I think Fausto deliberately kicked my horse and that’s why she bolted.’

‘But why on earth should he want to make your horse bolt? His foot probably nudged your beast by accident. It’s hard to know where to put your legs on those brutes, especially when you’re the size of that gangling lump Fausto. He could practically straddle that horse and still keep both feet on the ground.’ Marcos smiled at me in a pacifying sort of way, as if I was a small child who had complained a playmate had shoved her over in a game. ‘Those horses crowd together and lean on one another’s flanks every chance they get. They’re doing it now. It’s little wonder he bumped you.’

He pointed to where Hinrik was riding back towards us, leading one of the other horses. The rest were following, pressing themselves so tightly together that it seemed as if they were one beast with twenty legs. My own mount, the wretched little troll-wife, was trotting calmly back towards her companions as if nothing had ever alarmed her, deftly skirting the rocks without once breaking her gait.

‘You look as bedraggled as a street urchin,’ Fausto said cheerfully as he drew close. ‘But no bones broken, I hope.’

‘Do you?’ I answered coldly.

A vaguely startled expression crossed his face. But before he could reply, Hinrik trotted up.

‘There is a bóndabær … farm … not far. We can sleep there.’

‘You know the farmer? Are you sure he will give us hospitality?’ Vítor asked him.

The boy looked mildly surprised. ‘I do not know anyone in these parts. But it is the custom, if a stranger asks for shelter, he will be given it.’

Vítor turned to us. ‘If the boy speaks the truth, then I think we should avail ourselves of the hospitality while it is still permitted for us to do so.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Let’s sleep under a solid roof while we can, for if we find ourselves still in this land in two weeks’ time, then we’ll be forced to fend for ourselves out in this.’ He swept his hand towards the distant mountain peaks, suddenly dark and menacing in the fading light.

‘And will you still be here in two weeks, Lutheran?’ Marcos asked sharply, but Vítor ignored him.

Hinrik, without even asking us if we wanted to remount, turned his horse’s head and began threading his way over the springy turf and through the rocks. The rest of the horses turned as one and followed, leaving us no choice but to trail after them.

My knee was really aching now. I wrapped Marcos’s cloak more tightly around me, but my sodden garments clung to me, chilling me to the bone. It wasn’t just my wet clothes that made me shiver, though. Marcos was too kind and generous to see it, but whatever he said, I knew Fausto had tried to get my horse to throw me. The ground was littered with sharp rocks. If I had fallen from a galloping horse on to any one of those I would have been killed or badly hurt.

I felt someone’s eyes on me and glanced over my shoulder in time to meet Vítor’s fixed gaze. His stare was cold and intense and I felt as if he was trying to read every thought in my head. I still could not bring myself to trust him. For all that he had rescued me in the forest that night, I could not rid myself of that image of him standing over me with a stick raised menacingly above my head.

But it made no sense. As Marcos said, why should either man want to harm me? They couldn’t have discovered who or what I was. If they had known, they would have told the captain of the ship that I was leaving Portugal illegally, and doubtless he would have been only too happy to chain me up until I could be returned, or sell me as a slave or even simply throw me overboard. They couldn’t know who I was, so why should either man want to do me harm? Yet I could not shake off the feeling that that was exactly what they intended.

And it wasn’t just my own life that they had threatened. If I was killed or badly injured and I couldn’t return with the falcons, my father, my whole family would go to their deaths believing I had deserted them. And if my father, a Marrano, was executed for killing those royal birds, they would use the outrage of the people to round up others. How many other innocent lives would end in the flames? How many more sobbing girls would place a box of bones on the pyre? How many Jorges would die in agony, their mouths bound so tightly they couldn’t even scream? Suddenly the enormity of what rested in my hands almost made me vomit with fear.

I had to get away from these men, and soon, before either of them could try to harm me again. My mistake before had been to involve the boy, Hinrik. This time I would have to do it alone.





Eydis



Mantle – when a falcon spreads her wings and her tail, and defensively arches over her food to protect her kill from other birds which might snatch it from her. If a falcon without a kill adopts this sitting position it is a sign she is irritated or feels threatened.



I lift the piece of black bog oak in my hands. It is an old friend, a friend I both respect and fear. The wood is oval like a giant egg, but it has been sliced down the middle and hollowed out, the hollow polished until it gleams in the firelight. It is a black mirror in whose labyrinthine depths the spirit wanders freely to see what it already knows but cannot yet give form.

I gaze unblinkingly into the black centre of the hollow. At first I see nothing but my own smoky reflection, but I know that I must sink beneath its surface, allow my sight to be pulled deeper and deeper into its heart until the hollow becomes bottomless, timeless, eternal, until I can see into the eighth day.

I am staring down a long, dark tunnel. A girl is standing at the far end. She is gazing towards me, as if she senses I am there, but cannot quite see me. She knows where she must go. But something has changed. A man is standing behind her. He is not one of the dead who follow her. He is alive and he is coming close to her, too close. He means her harm. She knows it and she is afraid. She turns away from me. Her fear is driving her, separating her from me, as a dog cuts out a single sheep from the flock. She is in danger, mortal danger. Even as I try to call out to her, she vanishes.

Someone is walking ahead of me. But it is not the girl. I recognize him. It is Ari. He is walking towards a farmhouse. It is the darkest hour of the night, and a chill wind is rolling down from the mountains. His step falters. He stops. He knows that something is terribly wrong. The farm dogs are howling, not barking excitedly at his approach, but whimpering in terror. They know him. He feeds them. They love him. At any hour when he approaches the farm, they recognize his tread, smell his scent on the wind and come running to leap up and lick him. But tonight they are cowering, trying to hide. They shrink from the house as if even to brush its walls terrifies them. All, that is, save one. This dog is screaming and jerking convulsively where it lies helpless on the ground. Ari can see at once that its back is broken.

He moves to try to help it, but he never reaches the poor creature, for his gaze is drawn instead to the door of the farmstead. Since the days of the Vikings, men have constructed such doors to withstand the onslaught of sword and spear. It is a craft learned from their fathers and their fathers before them. But now the stout timbers have been smashed open with such force that only a few splinters of wood dangle uselessly from the hinges and one of the great doorposts has crashed to the ground. Silence, as icy as a winter’s sea, flows out from the dark passageway beyond. Ari is terrified, but he forces himself to climb through the splintered wood.

He edges warily down the passageway as if he is in a stranger’s house, though he knows this place as well as he knows his own flesh. He creeps into the great hall beyond. Three oil lamps burn on those few wooden pillars which still remain upright. Their light is thin, flickering like candles on a tomb, and he knows at once that this is a grave.

The wooden beds are shattered as if great boulders have been hurled at them, but it is not rocks that have been thrown across the room, but bodies. Ari finds little Lilja lying in a twisted bloody heap at the base of one of the pillars. Her head is crushed as if it had no more substance than a snail’s shell. Her sister Margrét’s face is frozen in agony and terror. Her belly has been ripped open, her guts torn out. Unnur, her mother, is dead beside her daughter, her chest crushed in an embrace so powerful that the broken pieces of her ribs are protruding from the mangled flesh. Her sightless blue eyes stare up at Ari, even in death beseeching him for mercy that was not granted.

Ari is retching now, sweating with shock and fear. He is praying desperately that one man at least has survived, just one. But then he sees him, Fannar. His head has been torn from his shoulders, and lies, eyes still open, between his legs. He still grasps his axe in his hand, but the blade bears no blood. How could it? What chance did he have, what chance did any of them have against that monster?

Ari flees from the stench of blood. He hurtles back down the darkened passageway, desperate to get out of the house of death, as if somehow he will find life waiting outside.

I see him emerge from the broken doorway. I move towards him, wanting to comfort him, but I see the terror spreading across his face. My arms are spread wide, but he backs away from me, pleading, sobbing. I taste my cold, fetid breath. I feel the grave mould creeping across my face, eating into the skin. My lips curl into a snarl and I feel the strength pounding through my hands like rivers of fire. I know I am going to crush him as I crushed Unnur. I know I am going to rip his limbs from his body as I twisted Fannar’s head from his shoulders. I know I am the draugr and I will destroy them all!

It takes all my strength to tear my gaze from the dark mirror and send the wooden hollow clattering to the cave floor. As my mind returns to the cave, dark laughter rolls around its walls. I look down. Valdis’s mouth is open wide, her head thrown back.

‘What did you see that frightened you so, my sweet sister? Could you see me, Eydis, Eydis? I think you did. You are growing fond of me, I knew you would. Let me in. You can’t close your mind to me for ever. It weakens you to try. Sooner or later I will creep in. I will slip between your sleeping and your waking. I will slide into your dreams. You will grow weary and careless, you know you will. It is only a matter of time, my sweet Eydis, and I can wait, oh yes, the dead are well schooled in the art of waiting.’

I try to close out the words. I have to take more care. I am sickened by what I have seen in the black mirror. I knew that the draugr would use us if I could not drive him back into his own body, but to see the shadow of it, taste the foulness of the grave in my mouth, see death in my hands – that goes beyond knowledge, it enters the very soul. And it will happen exactly as I have seen it, if I cannot find a way to stop him.

And Fannar and his family will only be the beginning of the destruction he will wreak across the land. In his hatred and jealousy of the living he will kill as surely as a cloud of poison gas. With each slaughter he will grow in strength. With each drop of blood he spills, his craving for murder will increase. And no one, not even the man who raised him, will have the power or strength to stop him then.

I did not mean to see Fannar’s fate. Heidrun is right, I have allowed my powers to wither. Having to fight, both sleeping and waking, to close my mind to the draugr takes all that strength I possess. When my spirit is inside the black mirror I am vulnerable. I cannot defend myself against him. I know that now. I dare not risk using it again when I am alone with him.

But the girl is in danger. If she does not reach the cave, if she cannot bring the dead here, then all is lost. I have to try to protect her, to make her turn back to me.

The cave is growing warmer. The heat makes me drowsy, but I must not surrender to sleep, not yet. I push myself to my feet and cross to my stores, moving aside jars and bundles until I find what I seek – fern seed to make the girl invisible to evil spirits; dried blood-red rowan berries to summon the spirits of the dead to battle. I take a few flakes of precious salt and mix it with the water from the hot bubbling pool, stirring it three times with my little finger as the sun turns. I reach for my horn lucet which hangs from my waist and dip the cord which dangles from it three times into the salt water. Then I loop and knot, loop and knot, fastening the rowan berries and fern seed deep inside the heart of the cord.

‘The black thread of death to call the spirits from their graves. The green thread of spring to give them hope. The red thread of blood to lend them our strength. As we turn the cord towards the sun, so we turn the eyes of dead towards the living. Rowan, protect her. Fern, defend her. Salt, bind her to us!’

Valdis’s head twists up to gaze at me from eyes that are all black. ‘You could plait a cord as long as the ocean is deep and you won’t reach her, my sweet sister. What feeble charms and powers you think you possess cannot reach beyond the walls of the cave. That is why they chained you up in here. That is why they bound you in iron to make you powerless and stop you reaching out to them. You can no more protect the girl than you can bring her here. You are weak, Eydis, Eydis. Accept it, accept me. Let me join myself to you and I will give you power to take vengeance for what they have done to you. I will give you the strength to destroy them all!’