The Falcons of Fire and Ice

CHAPTER Twelve



The shamans of the North say that before the world was made, there was nothing but chaos and darkness, a vast ocean which raged and foamed and would not be still. From the dark, tormented seas a tiny island emerged. Two beings appeared on the island. They were each male and female in one body, but neither being could be complete without the other.

One of these beings found a stick and broke it in two and placed it upright on the shore which was neither earth nor water, but both sea and land. The beings watched and waited. Then out of the darkness flew a white falcon and the moment it alighted on the stick, light began to creep over the island and the seas shrank back from it. The island grew bigger and bigger until it became the world.

And the falcon flew over the face of the world until he found a woman, who was fairer and more lovely than any woman who has ever lived since, and from their union, the very first shamans were born, with the power to send their spirits up into the stars.





Isabela



Cast of hawks – two falcons working together to hunt the same quarry.



I am lost in the forest again. I feel very small. An old woman hurries along beside me. She is holding tightly to my little hand, almost dragging me. She is my grandmother. Somehow I know that. It’s dark and we are weaving between the thick tree trunks. I can see the dark smudges of others walking ahead of us. A man I know is my father carries my little brother on his back. I wish he would carry me instead. I’m tired. My legs ache. I don’t want to walk any more. I want to go home to my soft bed.

Grandmother is holding my fingers much too tightly. The ring on her finger digs into the back of my hand. It hurts. I’m too hot. I am dressed in too many layers of clothes. I want to tear them off. I feel squashed and stiff. It’s hard to bend my arms. There’s a sharp stone in my shoe. It hurts every time I put my foot down. I keep tugging on Grandmother’s hand, trying to make her stop so that I can take it out, but she yanks me forward crossly, making me run. I hate her. I want to hold my mother’s hand instead, but she is carrying the baby.

My father stops. Men are stepping out of the trees in front of us. My father whips round, staring at something behind me. I turn. More men are stepping out from the shadows behind us and walking towards us. They’re carrying cudgels and swords. One man ambles towards my grandmother, swinging his cudgel in his hand.

‘Running away, are you, Huguenot traitors?’

‘Let the children go,’ my father says. ‘Please … they are innocent.’

The man snorts. ‘What man would be so foolish as to go to the trouble of hunting down a viper, and not destroy its young? You think we want more Huguenot spawn infecting France with poison?’

The man with the cudgel bounces the end of the stick against the palm of his other hand. I can hear the slap, slap of it as he walks slowly towards us through the fallen leaves. Grandmother pushes me behind her, one hand on my arm to hold me there. The man smiles at her. I can feel Grandma shaking and I want to tell her not to be scared. The man won’t hurt us. He is smiling at us.

The cudgel whistles through the air. It strikes my grandmother on the side of her head and she falls. The man raises the stick again and hits her hard on her back. He is beating her over and over again. She is crying. Grandmother never cries.

I call out to my father to tell him to make the man stop, but he is kneeling on the ground, cradling my little brother against his chest. Two men are hacking at him with their swords. I turn and run, but someone grabs me, lifts me off my feet. Thick, hairy arms are crushing me. I fight and fight, but I can’t get free. My lungs are bursting with the effort of trying to scream, but no sound comes out.

I woke with a violent jerk and lay sweating and trembling. The heads of both twin sisters were turned in my direction and I knew they were watching me beneath their veils. I felt the intensity of their gaze even though I couldn’t see their eyes. It was almost as if they were able to see inside my nightmare.

When I first entered the cave I thought I was dreaming then. My head was thick and heavy from hunger and exhaustion, and the heat which enveloped me was the last thing I expected, though at first I was glad of it. My father had taken me into caves before when we were away catching the passage falcons as they migrated. Some were shallow and dry, others deep and resonant, with water dripping from dark green ferns which overhung the entrance. But always the caverns were cool, even cold. I had never imagined that a cave could be warm and steamy, or that rocks on which I walked in the darkness so far below the earth could be as hot as stones that had lain all day in the summer’s sun.

But then I saw Eydis, and for a moment, I believed she was some demon chained there to guard the entrance to hell. I had to stop myself from crying out. When I looked again though, I saw she was no demon, but a woman like me. She was tall and thin, clad in a brown woollen skirt, but naked from the waist up. Her breasts were bound with a simple band of cloth knotted at the front. Her head and face were covered by a black veil.

But it wasn’t her clothes that made me shudder. There was a second woman, dressed exactly like Eydis, growing out of her side. Valdis, her twin sister, was joined to her at the hip. Each woman possessed their own head, arms and torso, but shared a single pair of legs. This second woman lolled out sideways from Eydis’s upright body. Her arms dangled limply beneath her and the nails on her twig-like fingers were black. Her head rolled backwards from its own weight, so that when Eydis moved she was compelled to put an arm around her sister’s shoulder and clasp her in a strange embrace to keep her upright, so that they could walk.

And this was not the worst of it. For while the skin on Eydis’s body and arms was firm and healthy, though very pale from having lived all her life without the sun or wind, the skin of her twin was a yellowish-brown, loose and wrinkled. Her body and arms resembled the mummified hands and feet of saints preserved in the reliquaries of the great churches and cathedrals of Portugal. I would have sworn she was dead and yet I knew she couldn’t be, for she turned to stare at us through her veil, and when she spoke I could see her lips moving beneath it.

Two thick iron hoops encircled the waists of both women. They were fastened to two long, heavy chains and these in turn were attached to a single iron ring embedded in the rock of the cave wall. You could see the calluses on the women’s skin where for years they had chafed and rubbed. Their chains were long enough for the twins to move freely around the cave, though not to get close enough to the entrance to peer up through the slit in the rocks high above and glimpse the sun or the stars.

I’d seen the mad chained up like that. People who rave and babble nonsense, who try to savage any who approach them and tear at their own hair and flesh till they’re raw and bleeding. But Eydis was not mad. I could hear the calmness in her voice, watch the sure and methodical way she tended the wounds of the poor injured man who lay unconscious in one corner of the cave. A madwoman couldn’t heal. It took great skill and reason to do that.

I felt an overwhelming surge of pity for Eydis, as I would if I had seen an eagle in a tiny cage, never allowed to stretch its wings or fly. Weren’t Eydis and Valdis already bound to each other for life, never able to have a moment’s solitude to walk alone, to fall in love? Why did others have to add to their misery by chaining them up below the earth?

Those first two days in the cave passed in a strange kind of limbo. I felt as if I’d died and was waiting in a chamber that was neither in heaven nor hell, nor on the earth, waiting for someone to tell us where to go. Ari couldn’t bear to be contained. He was constantly slipping down the passage to stand below the entrance, to see where the sun was in the sky, or if the moon had risen. Each time he went, I felt panic rising in me. The hours and days were sliding away. My father too was trapped away from the light, chained like the sisters. I couldn’t leave him there. I couldn’t leave him to die. I had to escape and search for the falcons. But each time I moved towards the passage Fannar barred the way.

‘Danir! Danes!’ he said, gesturing upwards.

Marcos and Vítor were restless too. Perhaps the confinement was making them also feel trapped and nervous, but there was a strange enmity between them. They’d certainly never been friends, none of the three men had, yet now Marcos seemed to go out of his way to sit as far away from Vítor as he could. Once I even saw him try to strike up a conversation with Unnur, just to avoid Vítor, though she looked completely mystified, not understanding one word of what he was saying.

I thought often about Hinrik. I prayed that they hadn’t hurt him, that they had let him go. He had been so terrified of being caught by the Danes, but surely they would quickly realize he was innocent of any crime? What had he done that they could possibly accuse him of?

I thought too about poor Fausto. Had poor little Hinrik been right after all when he said Fausto loved me? Was that why he’d made that brave, foolish attempt to return to the house? I’d been so certain he’d tried to kill me when he kicked my horse. Now that he was dead, I knew it must have been an accident, like Marcos had said.

What was wrong with me? How could I think that any one of these men who had risked their lives to defend me from the Danes would want to harm me? Perhaps it was the shock of knowing that everything I had been brought up to believe was a lie, that my parents, the people I had trusted the most in the world, had lied to me. It had made me suspicious of everyone. I’d even imagined that Vítor wished me harm, when in fact he’d done nothing but try to protect me. Like poor Fausto, Vítor and Marcos were both kind men and I was angry with myself for ever being suspicious of them.

But by the second night I could bear the waiting no longer. Whatever the danger from the Danes, I had to leave the refuge of the cave and hunt for the falcons. I felt so guilty, because Fannar and his family had lost everything they had to protect us. It was a betrayal of them to put myself in danger again, but I couldn’t just sit here and let my father, my mother and who knew how many more, burn.

I forced myself to stay awake and watch until the others fell asleep, though in the soporific heat of the cave it wasn’t easy to keep my eyes open. But finally, when I was sure they were all lost in their dreams, I rose quietly, tiptoed out of the cave and slipped around the rocky outcrop. I groped my way along the passage, trying to place my feet as carefully as I could so as not to dislodge any of the loose stones that littered the floor. At the far end was a heap of rocks and boulders that I knew formed a rough staircase up which you could climb to reach three or four rocky ledges one above the other, like the rungs of a ladder, leading up to the long narrow slit far above my head.

As I stood at the bottom, I could just make out a single silver star shivering in the blackness overhead, but its tiny light did nothing to illuminate the rocks. When I had first entered the cave Fannar had helped me down, holding my ankles and guiding my feet on to the next ledge and the next rock, but now I couldn’t see so much as a hand in front of me to find my way back up.

I cursed myself for not having the sense to bring a lamp, and wondered whether to return for one, but I remembered that even down here, the faint glow might be seen shining up through the crack at night and betray the hiding place of the others. I would have to feel my way up one boulder at a time. But as I was reaching up, trying to find a handhold, someone grabbed my shoulder. I whipped round, stifling a cry. Vítor was standing directly behind me.

‘I woke and saw you were missing,’ he whispered. ‘I was concerned for you. Where are you going?’

‘I … I just wanted to look out of the entrance,’ I said, keeping my voice as low as possible. ‘I feel so closed in and it’s so hot. I need some cold fresh air.’

‘I too would like the chance to breathe fresh air, but it is an extremely irresponsible thing to attempt. If you are seen and give away our hiding place, we will all suffer. You have a habit of wandering off, Isabela, first in France and then that first night in Iceland, and on both occasions you would have died, if we hadn’t –’

‘Don’t touch her!’

We both looked up, startled, to see Marcos stumbling towards us, tripping over the stones in his haste to reach us.

‘I assure you I have no intention of touching the young lady,’ Vítor said. ‘I was merely advising Isabela that it wasn’t safe to go out. She has an unfortunate history of accidents whenever she ventures off on her own. Fortunately none has yet proved fatal, but …’

‘You bastard,’ Marcos growled. ‘Don’t you –’

Fannar peered around the rock outcrop. He gestured impatiently for us to return to the cave, putting his finger to his lips and gesturing upwards. ‘Danir!’

We had no choice but to follow him back inside. Fannar was evidently grumbling to Ari and glowering in our direction. He lay down again but this time across the entrance to the passage, so that anyone trying to go down there would first have to step over him. We all lay down in our separate spaces. I was trembling with frustration. If it hadn’t been for Vítor detaining me and Marcos waking Fannar, I could have been out there now. Why did Vítor and Marcos have to follow me around as if I was a wayward child? What did it matter to them if I left or not? The tension between them was so palpable that I was sure if Fannar hadn’t woken up, they would have started wrestling each other to the ground like small boys. This confinement was getting to all of us. But I had to find a way out.

I found myself staring at the narrow ledge that ran alongside the pool. It went far back, disappearing through a tunnel beyond the pool, where the water rushed out. Was there a second cave beyond this one? Vítor, Marcos and Ari had all emerged from that tunnel the day Fannar brought us here. Perhaps if I followed the water, I would find another hole leading to the outside.

I wanted to leap up at once and try it out, but I knew I had to restrain myself until the others were sleeping. I didn’t want Vítor following me again. I sat upright, pressing my back against a sharp point on the cave wall to keep myself from drifting back into sleep in the warmth. I told myself I had to stay awake so that I could try once more to escape the cave, but deep down I knew that wasn’t the only reason. I was too scared to sleep in case my nightmares dragged me back into that forest where the men with swords and cudgels lay waiting for me in the darkness among the trees.

But in spite of all my efforts to stay awake, in that heat sleep was impossible to fight and I found myself beginning to surrender to it. My head cracked against the rock, as it lolled sideways, and I sat up sharply, rubbing the bruise. As I looked up, I suddenly saw Hinrik standing in the shadows on the opposite side of the cave. I scrambled up, overjoyed and immensely relieved to see that he was safe.

‘Hinrik, you got away! How …’

He took a step forward, holding something out in his hand. His face, his chest and arms were bruised and bloody, but only as he moved did I see the heavy rope noose dangling from his neck.

He opened his palm. A small white pebble lay in his hand. ‘The stone,’ he said. ‘I thought it was for the witch, but it was for you.’

‘Hinrik, you’re hurt. What have they done to you?’

‘Did you say Hinrik?’ Marcos whispered behind me. ‘Is the lad here?’ He moved closer, staring about him. ‘Where is he?’

I know that at twilight your eyes can be tricked into thinking dead trees are old men, or someone is seated in an empty chair. And I was sure that if I looked again I would see now that what I had taken to be Hinrik was just a rock, and what I heard was just the echo of a voice from a dream. But when I turned to look, Hinrik was still standing watching me, and my eyes couldn’t turn him into shadow again. Despite the heat of the cave, a cold wave of fear drenched me. I suddenly knew he had not escaped and now he never would.

I swallowed hard, trying to keep the fear from my voice. ‘I … I woke up and thought I saw the boy, but …’

Marcos yawned. ‘It’s this place, the damnable heat. It’s enough to drive anyone crazy. But I don’t think there’s much chance of seeing that poor lad again. I was going to try to cut him loose back there at the farmstead, but there wasn’t a hope of rescuing him, not when the fire started. Once those flames got going, if I’d tried to get anywhere near him I’d have been seen as clearly as if I was strolling around in summer sunshine.’

He half-lifted his hand and I thought he was going to pat my shoulder, but something must have stopped him for he let his hand drop. ‘Don’t worry. The boy comes from here. He’ll know how to handle the Danes. They’re bound to let him go in the end, but when they do I don’t think he’ll be in much of a hurry to find us again. He’ll already be back with his own family by now, telling them all about his adventures and convincing his sisters they made him captain before he left.’

Marcos smiled at me as if he thought he’d reassured me. ‘I should lie down, Isabela, and try to sleep again. God knows, there nothing else to do here.’

So saying, he wandered back to his sleeping place and curled up again on the ground, obviously intending to take his own advice.

I turned back, praying I would see nothing except the wall of the cave, but Hinrik was still there, the noose hanging from him. I ached to tear it away, to free him from it, but I knew I couldn’t. No one could take it from him now.

I sensed a movement on the other side of the cave. Eydis was awake, and her veiled head was turned as if she was gazing straight at the spot where Hinrik stood. I was certain she could see him too. She held her hand towards him, palm up, as if she was welcoming a guest. In a way that gave me courage. At least I knew I wasn’t melting into madness. Hinrik turned towards her and it almost appeared as if they were speaking to each other, whispering, yet I couldn’t hear their voices. It was like when I had heard the gyrfalcons calling, hearing them, yet knowing that there was no cry to hear.

Hinrik’s bloodied face turned back to me and his dark, hollow eyes met mine. I was so afraid, yet how could I be scared of someone I felt so much pity for?

‘Why … why have you come?’ I whispered.

‘You call the dead.’

I stared at him, unable to believe what I heard, but before I could even try to make sense of the words I was thrown off my feet, and fell sprawling on to the rocks. The floor of the cave was trembling violently. Lilja and Margrét were shrieking in fear. It was as if some beast was roaring deep beneath us in the earth. The shaking only lasted moments, but stones and rocks continued to crash down in the passage even after it had stopped. We all fled towards the pool in terror that we were going to be crushed, but at that moment there was a great hiss and a jet of stinking gas erupted from the centre of the pool. Unnur dragged her daughters into the furthest corner of the cave away from the bubbling water. Only the unconscious man remained unmoved. Not even the shaking of the rocks had been able to rouse him. The rest of us gazed fearfully at the ledge on which Marcos and Vítor had stood, just two days before. Now it was invisible behind a dense cloud of hot white steam.

When finally there was silence, Vítor and Ari ran to the passage. We all gazed about us. A deep crack had appeared, running across part of the wall of the cave, which I was sure had not been there before. Small fragments of rock still trembled on the floor where they had fallen from the roof. It was a miracle none of us had been hit. We were all holding our breath, terrified of what Vítor and Ari might discover in the passage. But they returned a few minutes later, breathing hard but looking immensely relieved.

‘Some rocks have been dislodged,’ Vítor said, ‘but the entrance is still open and we can still climb up to it, though it will be more difficult now.’

Eydis pulled her twin upright, gripping her around her bare shoulders as she moved towards the pool. She held her hand over it for a moment as if she was commanding the waters. Then she backed away. She murmured something to Fannar and his family, pointing to the steam over the pool. Fannar looked troubled and his wife clutched her two children to her as if she was trying to defend them from Eydis’s words.

Fannar marched over and seized the chains that tethered Eydis and her sister to the wall of the cave. He tugged on the ring embedded in the wall, as if he was trying to prise it loose. But Eydis stepped swiftly towards him and pushed him away from the ring. It sounded as if they were arguing, and Valdis had joined in too, her head swivelling round as Eydis supported the weight of her body in the crook of her arm.

Eventually Fannar gave up and, with a shake of his head, he stomped away, still muttering angrily. Pausing only to growl at Ari, gesturing back at the sisters and then at us, he marched into the passage and minutes later we heard him scrambling up the rocks towards the entrance. Unnur bit her lip, staring anxiously in the direction of the sound. She looked despairingly at Ari, then, much like my mother, like all mothers probably, when there’s nothing else they can do, she sighed and started to rummage among the stores looking for food to prepare.

‘Help me,’ a voice said at my side. ‘You must help us.’

I felt a sudden chill beside my arm. I did not turn to look. I knew Hinrik was standing behind me.

‘I can’t help you …’ I whispered. ‘I can’t undo what’s been done to you. Please … leave me alone.’





Ricardo



Crab – a fight between hawks. If a falcon is irritable or trying to attack another falcon it is said to be crabby.



I was sodden with sweat in the steamy heat and I was sure I looked as flushed as if I’d swallowed half a bottle of brandy, though I hadn’t, more’s the pity, but Vítor’s face thrust arrogantly into mine was paler than ever. He’d finally managed to trap me in a corner. I’d been trying to avoid the little turd ever since we arrived, and believe me, that takes some ingenuity when you’re trapped in a cave, but this insufferable heat was making me careless. I’d dropped my guard and he’d blocked my way so that I’d no choice but to listen to him. I knew what was coming. He’d been watching Isabela like a … no, not like a cat watches a mouse, because at least a cat does its own killing, if there’s murder to be done. Vítor put me in mind of a loathsome vulture hovering over the condemned until some other predator does what it doesn’t have the guts to do.

‘You do realize that we must leave this place soon,’ Vítor whispered. ‘The cave will grow too hot to remain in much longer.’

I didn’t need a Jesuit to tell me that. We were all dripping with sweat. I thought nothing could be hotter than Belém in midsummer, but it was the steam that got to me here. My clothes, everything, were wringing wet, and it made you so exhausted, you didn’t want to move, just lie there gasping like a stranded fish. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the foul vapours stank of rotten eggs.

‘This is your chance,’ Vítor continued. ‘Ensure that Isabela remains in the cave after we leave and the steam will do the rest.’

‘Leave her to be scalded alive, you mean. That’s one way to ensure a bloodless death. You’ll be able to swear before your confessor that your hands are as white as the snow on the mountains, not dripping with her gore. I suppose Jesuits do make confessions, or are they so pure and holy they don’t need to?’

Vítor looked at me as if I was an insolent schoolboy he was itching to birch. ‘I simply cannot understand why you thought nothing of strangling your lover with your bare hands and dumping her body, like a drowned puppy, for the crabs to pick at, yet now you throw up your hands like some delicate noblewoman and declare you couldn’t possibly kill vermin. But if you have suddenly discovered a conscience, then surely you must recognize that I am offering you a way out? You don’t need to kill the girl yourself. With everyone scrabbling to leave, you can easily ensure that you and she are the last two in the cave. Rocks have fallen before. They can easily be dislodged again to ensure that she cannot climb out.’

‘You want me to leave her to die in agony, slowly broiling to death?’

Vítor gripped my arm so hard I thought he was going to break it, but he knew I could do nothing to stop him without drawing attention.

‘If you had left her to be swallowed up in the bog instead of dashing to her rescue, it would all be over by now. It is entirely your fault it has come to this. But if you really are so squeamish about her dying in pain, then hit her over the head, knock her out so that she will know nothing about it. I don’t know why you have to make difficulties, Cruz. It is really all quite simple.’

For a moment I wondered if he intended to trap us both in the cave and leave us to die. That too would be quite simple, except that even he might believe that was murder, and he didn’t want the sin of one death, never mind two, on his soul.

‘Look,’ I said, trying to resist the overwhelming urge to knee him in the balls and doing my best to adopt a friendly, reasonable, we’re-both-men-of-the-world tone. ‘I quite understand that if we were back in Portugal, surrounded by the king’s men, the members of the Inquisition and their familiaries, you and I would have to kill this girl. We’d have no choice. A hundred people would know at once if we hadn’t. But who is there here to report us? She’s never going to catch this white falcon. We haven’t even seen so much as a feather of this wretched bird, much less captured it. I’m beginning to doubt they even exist here. And with half the Danes on the island out looking for us, how is she going to set traps or whatever it is they do? And if by some miracle she does get her hands on one, I can see to it that she loses any money she has to buy a passage on a ship. She’ll never get off the island.’

I adopted an ingratiating smile, not easy when your face feels as if it’s melting and dripping off your bones. ‘Come on now, Vítor, we’ve enough problems of our own trying to get out of this mess alive to bother about this girl. Between this cave and the Danes we’ll need all our wits to survive ourselves without worrying about her. Why don’t we just let her go? You and I can return home and tell them she’ll not be coming back to Portugal, which is the truth. Neither one of us will have her blood on our hands. Then both our consciences will be clear.’

Vítor lifted his chin and glared at me as though I had just suggested that he should bugger his bishop. ‘Are you suggesting that I, a Jesuit, a consecrated priest, should deliberately lie to my superiors, to the Holy Catholic Church and to my king?’ His tone was cold enough to freeze steam.

‘It wouldn’t be a lie to say –’

‘Kill her, Cruz. Kill her or I promise you that you will be returning to Portugal in chains and I will see to it that before you die you personally enjoy every single exquisite torment the Inquisition has in its mercy ever devised. Every heretic that lives is another nail in the hands of Christ. For every heretic we fail to bring into repentance or send straight to eternal hell, we his servants will be severely punished. And I do not intend to fail my Lord or my Church, Cruz. I want her dead, do you understand me? Not escaped … not free to live out her foul life in another land … but dead!’





Eydis



Cope – to trim the beak and talons of a hawk.



We no longer have the time to wait. I have told Fannar he must take his family and the foreigners from the cave tonight. He has gone to try to find a safe place for them, and a safe route to take them there. He knows, as I do, that the shaking was only a warning. There will be others, and the next could cause the passage to collapse, trapping us all in here, sealing us in our tomb.

Isabela has called Hinrik to this cave, but it is not enough. He is only a boy, as timid in death as he was in life, and who can blame him? If he stands against the draugr and the draugr overcomes him, as he surely will, then he will have the power to torment the boy for all eternity. What can an old woman and a boy do against a draugr? Though they are dead, they will not pass judgment against him. He will frighten them into silence. I need the girl to call the others, but she will not listen. I cannot make her hear me. I need her to understand what she must do. She speaks to the dead boy, but she is afraid of him, afraid of the dead.

I must speak with her directly, make her trust me, make her strong. I have to find a place to talk to her where the spirit that infects my sister cannot hear us. He must not know what we are planning. But will Isabela go there? It is a place of terror to her. Does she have the courage to enter it of her own will?

The rocks tremble again, not as violently this time, but far below I hear a rumble like thunder, deep in the earth. I dare not wait. If I cannot speak with her now it will too late for all of us. Hinrik is afraid to do what I ask, but he will do it. He knows that if the draugr cannot be destroyed, neither the living nor the dead will be safe from his terror.

I cross to my stores and rummage among the jars until I find the draught I am searching for. I measure out the contents carefully – too little and it will not work as swiftly as I need it to do, too much and it will kill her.

‘Hinrik, you must make her come to me. There is no other way left now, no time, no time.’





Isabela



Jouk – when a hawk or falcon sleeps.



The clinging cold on my arm was lifted, and for a moment I thought Hinrik was gone, but then I saw him, standing over the body of the injured man.

It was as if all the other people in the cave were there, still talking, still moving, but their voices were distant. Yet Hinrik’s voice was loud in my ear as if he was talking inside my own head.

‘You must send the spirit back into this corpse.’

This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. I was imagining it. Hinrik was not here. I was dreaming, still dreaming, and yet I couldn’t wake myself. But I found myself speaking as you do speak in a dream both to the dead and the living who come to you in your sleep.

‘He’s not a corpse. The man is sick, but he lives. Look at him, he is breathing.’

‘No.’ The word fell like lead upon stone. ‘He drowned many months ago. But there are some men who have the power to raise a corpse and make it walk again to destroy the living.’

It couldn’t be true. That man wasn’t dead. Anyone could see that. He looked even healthier than Valdis and I knew she lived. And Eydis was tending him as if he was a sick, old man. If he was a corpse raised to hurt people, why would she do that?

Unless … unless I had mistaken Eydis’s nature and there was a very good reason people had chained her up in here. Was she the sorceress who raised the corpse? Was that why she was trying to heal him?

As if I had spoken these words aloud, Hinrik answered, ‘Eydis could not go to his grave and raise him. She cannot go to any grave. You must help her. You must help us all. You must meet her, so that she can tell you what to do.’

I turned to stare at Eydis. Her head was turned towards me beneath the veil, her body was tense.

‘But I have met her,’ I answered stupidly.

‘You must meet in the place of your nightmares. Her spirit cannot leave the cave, but she can enter your dreams. She will not enter unless you invite her. But you must do it now.’

Eydis was holding a small wooden beaker out to me. Was she offering me something to make me sleep or worse, a sleep from which I’d never wake? I stared at the injured man lying in the corner. Had she poisoned him? Had she given him one of her potions?

‘You must sleep. You must help us,’ Hinrik repeated. ‘Trust her.’

Trust a woman whom I knew nothing of, no, not one woman, but two women grotesquely bound in one body? A monster that her countrymen had been so terrified of they had chained up in a cave? For all I knew Eydis had killed a dozen men or worse.

‘The white falcons. Eydis knows about the white falcons. She knows you need them. She knows where to find them. Help us and she will give them to you. But you must sleep or you will never find them.’

How could she know about the birds? Had Hinrik told her? Eydis was leaning forward, her face turned towards me. She touched her heart and bowed her head. I knew she was making me a promise. Did she really have the power and knowledge to help me catch the falcons? Time was running out. On my own I could search for days, weeks, months, and even then not catch one. But could I trust her? I had been so suspicious of Vítor, Marcos and Fausto, and they had only ever tried to help me. I had to begin trusting people again, and Eydis might be my only chance. All she wanted me to do was dream.

No, no, I couldn’t. The thought of being sent into a sleep from which I couldn’t rouse myself was terrifying. Suppose the ground started to shake again and I couldn’t wake up. Suppose I became one of those people again … that child, that woman being buried alive. I wouldn’t be able to wake and escape from it. I’d be trapped with them.

‘I can’t. I don’t want to dream … I don’t want to go back to that forest ever.’

‘Help us,’ Hinrik repeated. His voice was heavy with despair.

I glanced over at the others. They were all occupied. Vítor had finally cornered Marcos and they were engrossed in a whispered conversation which, judging by their grim faces, neither was enjoying. Ari was sharpening his knife against a stone, his head jerking up every now and then, listening out for anyone approaching the entrance to the cave.

Unnur and her daughters were preparing a dish of dark grey lichen. In the farm they had soaked it in milk, but they had no milk now, just water, and even they were wrinkling up their noses as they sampled it. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I was about to drink a potion to send me into a sleep from which I might never wake and they were simply cooking as if they were back at their own hearth.

‘Help us,’ Hinrik whispered.

Shakily I walked across to Eydis. It was only a few paces, yet somehow I couldn’t think how to move. Sweat was running down my face and my back was soaked with it. I crumpled down on to the rock. Eydis placed the beaker between us. Through her thick veil I could see a glint of her eyes watching me, but I knew she would not force me to drink. She would wait for me to choose.

I was shaking so much I had to grasp the beaker in both hands. I was afraid I would spill it all. I sniffed at it and caught the tang of stale sweat – valerian! I almost smiled; that was the herb Marc0s had picked when poor Fausto had accused him of trying to poison us. But there was something else in this dark liquid too, something I did not recognize.

Hinrik was standing behind Eydis. This time his whisper was so faint, I only saw his lips moving, but I knew what he was begging me to do. Eydis touched her hand again to her heart, swearing. The falcons. She would give me the falcons! I raised the beaker, and without giving myself time to think, I gulped the bitter liquid.

For a moment or two I had to fight to stop myself vomiting, but I managed to master it. The flames in Unnur’s cooking fire were spinning around the dark walls, the floor of the cave tipped sideways, and for a moment I thought the cave must be shaking again, but no one else seemed to notice. I was so dizzy I had to lie down. My eyes closed.

I am standing in the forest. Not a single star pierces the thick blackness. It’s as if all the light in the world and in the heavens above has been snuffed out. The branches of the trees creak in the wind. The dry leaves whirl around me, stinging my skin. But I am alone. No family hurries beside me. I cling to the rough trunk. My eyes ache as I strain into the darkness. My stomach clenches as I wait in terror for the men who will emerge from behind the rough trunks, but they don’t come. I don’t know what to do, where to go. I’m more afraid, now that I am alone, than I had been when I was running from the men. It’s as if I have been severed from life.

‘You have courage. I sensed that the moment I felt you step on to this land. You have courage, but you must find more.’

I spin round, but can see no one.

‘Eydis?’ I ask. ‘Where are you?’

‘Where you are. But you must listen – there is little time. We need to tell you what you must do.’

‘But I can’t do anything to help you. Hinrik is dead. I can’t bring him back to life. I have to leave the cave and find the white falcons. Hinrik said you would give them to me. I need two white falcons to save my father’s life and the lives of others too. Please, if you know where the falcons are, you have to tell me.’

I gaze around desperately trying to see her, but I can see nothing except the trees. Yet her strong voice weaves in and out through the moaning wind and the shivering branches.

‘We know what you seek, but unless you help us, you will not live to help your father. Listen to us, Isabela. The spirit of the dead man who lies in the cave has entered the body of my sister, Valdis. As long as the iron circle remains unbroken around Valdis’s body, the draugr’s spirit cannot leave the cave. But if we are freed from the iron, then the draugr’s spirit will be freed to leave the cave.

‘The mountain of fire is stirring and the water in the pool is answering. You felt the cave shake. The water is heating fast, soon the cave will be filled with scalding steam and every living thing in it will perish. That is why Fannar wants to break the iron hoops, so that Valdis and I can escape before we die.

‘But once outside the cave I will be unable to control the spirit in my sister. If we are released, then we will be dragged by him into malice and evil for generations to come. We will not be able to die. We will be forced to commit acts of terrible vengeance and destruction as he grows ever stronger. The draugr devours men. Birds that fly over him fall dead from the sky. Wherever he passes, humans and animals are driven mad, so that men attack their own wives, swearing they are hideous demons, and mothers drink the blood of their own babes. As the strength of the draugr grows, so he will have the power to turn summer into eternal winter, to turn day into night, a night of terror and destruction that will not end even for those he kills, for they in turn will rise again as draugr themselves. That is why Fannar and Ari must not release us.’

‘But you will die, Eydis … scalded to death,’ I tell her. ‘You can’t mean to do it … it is … a terrible death. And if you do die, what will happen to the spirit of the d … that thing then? What will happen to you?’

The branches of the trees in the dark forest bend lower. The wind rises higher, as if a great storm is running towards us.

‘If we die still bound in iron, neither his spirit nor ours can ever leave the cave. We will be trapped with him for ever.’ Her voice has a terrible icy resolve as if she is a judge pronouncing her own death sentence. ‘He will tear us to pieces. He will devour us. He will pour all his vengeance into our destruction, and each time he does we will become whole again, so that he can torment us anew. But even that I will accept rather than become that monster of hell and hatred.’

My fists clench against the rough bark of the tree. My own terror is forgotten in the horror of what she faces.

‘No, no! You can’t. There must be some other way. There has to be.’

‘You are the only way. You call the dead and you must summon a door-doom of the dead to the cave before it is too late. Only they have the power now to order him to return to his own flesh.’

Hinrik had said the same words. You call the dead.

‘But I don’t understand … I can’t call up the dead. Do you mean Hinrik? Did I call Hinrik? But I didn’t call him … I don’t know how.’

‘You brought Hinrik with the stone. But there are others, those you see here in this forest. They follow you. What do you use to call them?’

‘I don’t call them,’ I protest. ‘I just dream about them, but I don’t know why. I don’t even know who they are.’

‘And you have nothing that belongs to them?’ she presses relentlessly, as if she knows she can force a truth out of me that I don’t even know myself.

I desperately try to think. ‘It was dark in the forest, but I saw something pale and glinting amongst the leaf mould on a grave. I picked it up only to see what it was. I didn’t mean to take it but just as I touched it there was a shriek. It was terrifying. I thought there was some wild beast behind me, so I just ran, without thinking what I was doing. I fell into a gulley and it was only later that I realized I was still clutching it.’

‘Tell me what you took from that grave.’

‘It was a bone, a human finger bone with a ring still on it.’

I feel her sigh like a breath of wind on my cheek. ‘That is the cord that binds them to you. And that is what you must use to summon them to the door-doom. If I can be released from the iron without the draugr knowing, then together you and I can use that bone to summon the dead. But it must be done only when the moment is right. Too late and the pool will erupt before we can be freed from the iron. But if we act too soon and send the spirit back into the corpse, then the draugr will rise up and all of you will be trapped in a cave with a man who possesses the strength of ten and a thirst for vengeance that can never be slaked. He will crush you all as easily as a child smashes an egg shell before you can escape the cave.’

‘But how can we free you without –’

Something catches my eye in the darkness. I turn. A little way off among the trees a pale light is seeping up from the ground, like rising mist. But it isn’t mist. It glows with a pearly light as bright and white as a full moon, though there is no moon to shine on it. It hangs quite still among the distant trees. The wind which is rattling the leaves and lashing the branches doesn’t even stir it. But by its light, I suddenly see that the forest floor beneath it is rising in a great mound as if something is tunnelling up from below.

A huge horned head and neck burst from the ground with a bellow of rage. The rest of the beast erupts and a massive bull stands in the clearing, pawing at the ground. Its hide has been flayed from its body and hangs in tatters from the raw, bleeding flesh. Its eyes are great black holes and its mouth drips with blood. Before I can move, it lowers its great black horns and charges straight towards me.

I am running as fast as I can through the trees, but I know I can’t outrun it. The hooves thunder behind me, shaking the earth beneath me. Its roar explodes in my head. It’s getting closer and closer. I trip and plunge headlong. The beast is so close now, I can feel its foul dank breath, but I can’t move.

Krery-krery-krery!

Something white soars over the top of me. The bull bellows with rage. Sick with fear, I half-turn my head. A great white falcon is hovering above the bull. It flies at its eyes, its talons outstretched, striking with hooked beak, slashing with its claws. The bull is tossing its massive head, trying to impale the bird on its horns, but the falcon is too agile for it. It swoops on the bull again and again, driving it back. With a final bellow of fury, the bull sinks back into the earth that closes over it like a wave on the sea and it is gone. For a moment the falcon hovers above me in the darkness, its wings stretched out over my head. I reach out my hand, but the white falcon vanishes like smoke in the wind.

I woke, breathing hard and soaked with sweat. Eydis’s face was sunk into her hands and her chest heaved as she struggled to regain her breath. Valdis’s head was jerking as if she was in a state of great agitation. She was speaking, but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. First her voice was wheedling, and then sing-song like a child teasing a playmate, then came a harsh, mocking tone. Unnur and her daughters were standing transfixed, staring at her in alarm. Little Lilja ran to her mother, burying her face in Unnur’s skirts.

Valdis’s head swivelled towards me. Through the veil I could just make out two large eyes that seemed to be entirely black. They had no white part at all. It was like staring into a great bottomless pit. I had seen those eyes before as the creature charged towards me in the forest. It was staring out at me from behind her face. If it had the power to follow me into my dream, what was to stop it possessing me, as it had possessed Valdis?





Ricardo



Cadger – the person who carries the cadge, a wooden frame with padded edges, used to convey several hawks at a time out into the field.



‘Just ensure that she does not leave this cave alive!’ Vítor turned away without even bothering to wait for a response from me.

That odious piece of dung made my skin crawl. I know now why women want to scrub themselves clean after a man has forced himself on them. Why do priests think they only have to utter that word heretic for every man to go running for his pitchfork? I don’t care what any man or maid believes, so long as they don’t try to peddle me their cant. As a child I endured years of heaven and hell being rammed down my throat by my sainted mother and the priests, until I felt like a piglet being fattened for the butcher’s knife. I tell you, if you feed a man too much of anything, thereafter the merest whiff of it makes him vomit.

I sank back against the wall of the cave. Isabela was lying on the ground near the twins; she seemed to be asleep, her face buried in her arm, her curly dark hair falling in damp tangles across her slender neck. She looked so young and vulnerable. She reminded me of my poor Silvia sprawled across my bed in the heat of a summer’s afternoon sleeping like a child.

What on earth was I going to do? The only reason I was here was to kill the girl, and God knows I had good enough reasons. It was simple enough; dispatch her and return home to a civilized country where I could live in comfort in my own house, with the priest’s gold jangling in my pockets, or not kill her and face permanent exile or even be tortured to death myself, if that little weasel Vítor had his way. It wasn’t exactly a difficult choice to make now, was it, so why couldn’t I do it? I only knew as I watched her lying there that for some incomprehensible reason I’d never be able to harm her – other women perhaps, but not Isabela.

But if I didn’t, would Vítor kill her anyway? He’d talked about bringing down the rocks to trap her in here. Would Vítor’s hatred of Marranos overcome his distaste of dirtying his own hands? I had to warn her, but the problem was how to tell her who Vítor was, without also revealing that he’d been sent here to watch me commit a murder, her murder. It’s not the kind of thing you can casually walk up and whisper to a girl, is it?

I glanced up at the sound of raised voices. The twin sisters seemed to be having some kind of argument. Whatever it was about, Unnur and her daughters were looking thoroughly alarmed. It couldn’t have been easy for the sisters. I mean, if you quarrelled you couldn’t exactly storm off and leave the other.

I have to admit the twins were a bit of a shock at first. Two women on a single pair of legs, that’s not a sight you see every day. I wondered if any man had ever made love to them, now that would be an interesting threesome. Not that I harboured any ambition in that direction, in case you were wondering. I grant you, one of the pair had a nice firm body, but the other was so withered she looked more like her great-grandmother than her sister. But it did occur to me that if only they could be persuaded to come back to Portugal with me, I could make a fortune exhibiting them. I’d see that they were well rewarded, and surely a few hours each day showing themselves off to the crowd had to be better than a lifetime chained up in a cave, didn’t it? It was a wonder no one here had done it already, but then no man on this island would recognize a business opportunity, even if it was dangling from his own cock.

The twins crossed over to the man lying in the corner and one of them began rubbing more ointment on him. He looked as if someone had given him a thorough beating, but even in the time we’d been here the ointment seemed to be working miracles, and no wonder, given what Isabela had told me was in it. But the poor fellow still wasn’t moving. It was going to be the Devil’s own job getting an unconscious man out of the cave, especially if we had to do it in a hurry.

Isabela had woken and now she clambered unsteadily to her feet. She came towards me, stumbling like a sailor after a night in the tavern. I had to catch her in my arms to stop her tripping over. I lowered her to the floor against the wall of the cave, and crouched down beside her.

‘Anyone’d think you’d been drinking some of the brew the farmer’s wife served us that first night. You haven’t, have you?’ I said hopefully. ‘I could do with a few swigs of it myself – that water doesn’t just smell like bad eggs, it tastes of it too.’

She shook her head, then put her hand to it as if she wished she hadn’t. She sat for a long time leaning against the wall, lost in thought. I half-thought she’d drifted back to sleep, but suddenly she seemed to make up her mind about something, and she gripped my arm.

‘Marcos, would you do something for me?’

‘Ask away,’ I said. ‘What is it? Do you want me to fetch you water?’

‘I … would you try to cut through the iron hoops around the waists of the two sisters? That pool is heating up and we’ll have to leave soon. We can’t leave Eydis here chained up to die. But it’s going to take some time to saw through that iron. I don’t think the sisters have any tools we can use. You’ll have to use something like this, it’s all we have.’ She picked a sharp piece of stone from dozens of fragments littering the floor of the cave. ‘I saw Ari sharpen his knife on one of these earlier, so if you rasp at the metal, you should be able to break the bands in time.’

‘With bits of stone?’ I said. ‘Look, Isabela, I’d be the first to admit I’m no expert at these things. The only sawing I’m in the habit of doing is with my knife on the old horse flesh at my local inn, which the villain of an innkeeper swears is tender veal. But even I can see it’s going to take a lifetime to hack through those iron bands. Much easier to chip away at the rock where the iron ring is embedded. A bit of wriggling and I could probably work it loose and free both of them at once. I’ll make a start now.’

‘No, no, you mustn’t, please don’t do that … promise you won’t do that.’

I was taken aback by the panic in her tone and the look, bordering on fear, that passed across her face. Anyone would think I’d suggested chopping the twins in half to get them out.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘I know it’s going to be awkward for the sisters clambering about with those chains still attached, but don’t worry, we can help carry them. The main thing is to get them out. Then we can find a proper file or cutters and have them free quicker than a thief can cut a purse.’

Isabela gripped my sleeve again. ‘Please, you mustn’t, Eydis doesn’t want you to. She knows the clanging of the chains would carry for miles in these mountains, and the Danes are still searching for us. No, we have to get the hoops off. They must have rusted a little in the damp of the cave over the years, so I’m sure you can do it. Ari is already trying to free Eydis; please could you work on Valdis?’

I looked over. Ari had taken up his position behind Eydis and, judging by the way he was frowning, was already hard at work. I shrugged and lumbered towards the sisters, but Isabela seized the hem of my shirt.

‘One thing more … this is hard to explain … Don’t cut all the way through Valdis’s hoop, nearly through, so it can be broken quickly, but don’t break it, not yet. It’s important … really important.’

‘I thought getting the hoops off them was the whole idea,’ I said irritably.

‘Valdis doesn’t want the hoop removed until the very last minute, because … because … it’s the custom,’ Isabela said. ‘Swear you won’t until I tell you to?’

‘How do you know what Valdis wants?’

‘I told you, I can’t explain … but I know. Please trust me, Marcos.’

If I live as long as old Methuselah himself, I will never understand women. They are all as crazy as Icelandic horses. I resolved there and then that if I did ever manage to escape this country of lunatics with their slimy food and rabbit-burrow houses, boiling rivers and icy sun, I would never in my life again set foot in any foreign land.

I gathered up a few of the sharpest stones I could find and took up my position next to Ari, behind the two women. Eydis pulled her sister upright, clasping her tightly so that I could tackle the band around her waist. Have you ever tried to grate away at an iron hoop with a bit of stone, especially when someone is wearing it? I tried to do it without touching Valdis’s skin. I told myself it was out of respect for a woman, but the truth was, her skin looked so wrinkled and brown that I couldn’t bring myself to touch it. But the stone slipped off Valdis’s iron band and grazed her sister’s arm, a few drops of blood ran down the stone and on to my fingers, but she barely flinched.

Isabela had followed me over and now was sitting close by, watching me intently.

‘Don’t be afraid to touch Valdis. You’ll have to grasp the hoop firmly, like Ari’s doing.’

Though I was, of course, flattered that she wanted to watch me work, I was somewhat affronted by the suggestion that Ari was more competent than I was.

‘Ari has probably been sawing through iron hoops all his life,’ I said. ‘I imagine it’s all they can think of to amuse themselves on a winter evening round here. They find themselves a nice stout hoop and saw through it. They probably even lay wagers on it. My hands were never created for manual work.’

‘I know … but please try your best,’ Isabela said.

Gritting my teeth, I grasped the hoop and started pulling it away from her loose skin. Despite the heat of the cave I was shocked to find her body was as cold as the grave. I shuddered and pulled the band as far away from her back as I could. I knew I must be making it cut into her belly, but didn’t want to feel that flesh against my hand. The sooner I got this band off her the better. I sawed vigorously at the rim of it with the sharp edge of the stone.

Beneath her band I could see a thickened strip of skin, hard and rough as the sole of my foot. How long had she worn this thing? I knew only too intimately how iron bruises the flesh, how it cuts in deeper and deeper with each little movement. I remembered the raw burning of sores around my own wrists and ankles from those few weeks in the tower of Belém. The long sleeves on my doublet had hidden the scars on the ship until they healed, but they were still there.

I rasped more furiously, swearing, but not stopping, even when the stone slipped from the iron and skinned the knuckles of my other hand. The stone was still stained with Eydis’s blood and now it was supping mine too.

Without warning, Silvia’s face floated into my head, and my hands were not grasping stone and metal, but something soft and warm. Silva was laughing at me, taunting me, daring me. Then the laughter changed to another sound, one I’d never heard her make before, not even when she was shrieking in passion. Her eyes were wide open, but they were not mocking me any more. For a moment, only a moment, I saw something that might have been shock in those liquid dark eyes, shock and then nothing. There was nothing at all in those eyes, not even life.

‘Why have you stopped?’ Isabela asked anxiously. ‘What’s wrong? You look frightened.’

I shook my head and, breathing hard, picked up the stone which had slipped out of my wet fingers and attacked the iron again. I don’t know how long we were working. Fannar returned to eat, then went out again. Several times Ari and I were forced to rest. The sweat was pouring down our bodies. There was no relief to be had even in drinking, for though water was drawn from the pool and put aside to cool, it barely seemed to get any colder and the taste was worse than the smell.

I glanced over to see how Ari was doing, just in time to see the last little fragment break on Eydis’s hoop. It sprang open by no more than a baby’s-finger breadth. Eydis must have felt it give, but if she did, she gave not the smallest sign of it. It would take a couple of us, one pulling on either side, to bend it wide enough for her to slip out, but that could be done quickly now that the hoop was broken. Ari went to fetch himself some more water and wipe the sweat from his streaming face. Only a few more moments and I would be joining him. Valdis’s hoop was almost at the point where a few more rasps would break through it, but before I could finish, Isabela frantically beckoned me away and led me over to the far side of the cave on the pretext of finding me a cloth to wipe the stinging sweat from my eyes.

‘You’ve almost cut through the band, Marcos. You must leave it now.’

‘It won’t take much more,’ I said, massaging my bruised and cut hands. ‘The iron has rusted on the edges. Just as well, or I think I’d never have made a dent in it. Ari has broken through Eydis’s band. I’ll do the same for Valdis, then it will just be a matter of pulling the hoops wide enough apart for them to slip out.’

‘No, no, you must leave Valdis now, please. We can easily break the band when the time comes, but not yet. Promise you’ll leave it.’

Valdis’s head swivelled in my direction. She was calling out, and it didn’t sound to me as if she was thanking me. In fact, she sounded more than a little angry.

‘Are you sure that’s what she wants? She doesn’t sound too happy.’

Isabela bit her lip. ‘Eydis wants it this way. She knows what she’s doing. You have to trust her … you should rest now. You must be exhausted.’

These Icelanders were crazier than a rabid dog at the full moon, but I wasn’t going to argue. My fingers were swelling up like sausages and, to be honest, I wasn’t at all sure I could have managed to saw any more, even if she’d begged me to. Stretching my back, I made my way across the steamy cave towards the pail of hot water.

I staggered backwards as a sudden rumbling filled the cave and jets of stinking steam burst out of the pool, filling the cave with a dense white fog. Someone was screaming, but I couldn’t see whom. The dripping cave walls seemed to cool the steam a little as it rolled towards me, but it was almost impossible to breathe in it. Ari was shouting. I could scarcely see anything in the hot steam, except the smudged shapes of people moving as they loomed in and out of the fog.

‘Marcos, help me get the hoops off them!’ Isabela yelled.

I stumbled blindly across the cave, slipping on the wet stones, but I couldn’t see where Isabela was, never mind the sisters. Everyone was shouting. Shapes were forming and disappearing again in the steam.

I was terrified I was blundering in the wrong direction and might end up falling into the boiling pool. All I actually wanted to do was to get the hell out of that inferno as quickly as I could. If it had just been a matter of saving those two mad sisters, frankly I would have made straight for the passage and the way out, but Vítor was somewhere in this maelstrom, and I was damned if I was going to leave Isabela to his tender mercies.

I dropped to my knees, crawling over the rock. I discovered it was just a fraction easier to breathe closer to the ground. Then I saw them. Ari was crouching behind Valdis who was writhing and twisting. Isabela was frantically trying to pull open the iron hoop about Eydis’s waist.

‘Help me, Marcos!’ Isabela looked terrified, as well she might.

‘Can’t you get the sisters to sit still?’ I yelled in exasperation as the iron band slipped for the third time out of my sweating hands. ‘We’ll never get anywhere if they keep wriggling about. What the hell is Eydis trying to do, anyway?’

I was suffocating in the steam. My fingers were so wet I couldn’t grip the metal. Isabela crawled away, and for a moment I thought she had given up, then she returned with a blanket pulled from the sisters’ sleeping pallet.

‘Use this to hold it,’ she said, pushing the sodden cloth into my hands.

I wrapped my fingers in the edge of the blanket and seized the hoop in both hands, and as I pulled I felt the iron band begin to bend.

‘Here,’ I said to Isabela, ‘take the other side, now brace your feet against my legs and pull backwards.’

We strained against each other as the hoop slowly widened, and then it shattered. The force of its breaking was so unexpected we tumbled over. There was a bellow of rage which cut over all the other screams and shouts in the cave. Beside me, Isabela had struggled to her feet, and she was staring out into the cave, her eyes wide and frozen with terror.





Eydis



Ramage or rammish – a hawk or falcon which is wild and hard to catch, or an escaped bird that has fully returned to the wild and is extremely difficult to reclaim.



The draugr is fighting to break the iron band around Valdis’s waist. But he only has her hands to use. Bound by the iron, his strength is only her strength and her hands are weak, atrophied. But if Ari or the foreigner helps to break that iron before I can drive him out of Valdis, his strength will surge and I will not be able to prevent it. I must pull Isabela out of this time and take her to the place of the dead, before her iron circle is broken.

I catch Isabela’s arm. ‘Isabela, listen to me now as you listened in the forest.’

But I can see from her eyes she is too afraid to let me in. I will have to do this without her consent, and hope that she will understand and not fight me. I drag my lucet upwards and the long cord follows. Swiftly, before Isabela can move away, I wrap the cord around the three of us – Valdis, Isabela and me.

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.

Instantly the white mist hangs still and cool. The shouts and screams are severed and there is silence. The three of us are alone. Isabela’s eyes are wide with alarm. She turns her head, trying to see something beyond the white curtain of mist, but there is nothing to see.

‘Where are we? Are we still in the cave? Am I dreaming again?’

I cannot afford to explain. We must act quickly.

‘Isabela, the bone you took from the grave, hold it and use it to summon the door-doom.’

‘I don’t know how … what to do. I can’t.’

I try to calm her. ‘You can. They are all bound to you now. Hinrik through the stone he gave you, the old woman whose mummy heals your burn, those shadows who followed you from the forest. I called you to me, and now you must bring them to us. It is time.’

‘You don’t have the power to call up the dead, little Isabela, Isabela,’ the dark voice snarls from my sister’s lips. ‘You know you don’t. You don’t even know how to begin.’

I try to make Isabela listen to me. I can see she is terrified of the creature which speaks through my sister, and fear makes us listen to fear.

‘You called Hinrik to you,’ I tell her gently. ‘He told you that you had called him. Take out the bone, then turn and look at them. They are already here. They are the shadows you are afraid to face. Face them now and let them come to you.’

‘This is just a trick to keep you here,’ the dark voice snaps. ‘She wants you to die in the cave with her, so that she’ll always have you with her. She is dangerous. She is wicked. Why do you think they chained her up in a cave? They don’t chain up good people, only evil ones. Only the wicked are punished. Only the mad are chained up. You know that, don’t you, little Isabela, Isabela?’

Isabela stiffens, her expression hardens. She rubs her wrist as if remembering something she has felt. He has made a mistake, something he has said to her has made her angry, and anger drives out fear. Her fingers move towards the leather pouch about her neck, and she pulls out a small yellowing bone, encircled by an iron ring.

‘Don’t do it, Isabela, Isabela,’ the draugr shrieks. ‘Don’t bring the dead here. They followed you because they are angry. You stole from them. You robbed their graves and disturbed their rest. Now they want to punish you for what you did. If you bring the dead here, they will drag you back into the grave with them. You will be buried alive. They will never let you escape.’

‘Silence!’ I command. ‘Turn, Isabela, turn and look at them. The dead are nothing to fear. You know them, you know what they have suffered. Welcome them and let them speak.’

She is trembling. Her eyes are closed. I know she is terrified, but I know too that she is willing herself to turn.

All around us the white mist hangs in the air, still and soft as if we were encased in snow. I cannot see them, but I sense they are there in the mist, waiting, just waiting for her to call them forth. Slowly she turns and lifts her head. She holds out the bone, gripping it so hard in her fingers that the knuckles blanch to the colour of the bone she holds.

‘Come,’ she whispers, her voice shaking.

‘Do not turn away,’ I tell her. ‘See them, know them.’

The mist stirs and Hinrik steps through it. His face is bloody and the noose hangs heavy from his neck. He stands, his hollow eyes fixed on her face. Isabela gives the smallest nod of greeting to him

The old woman, her cheeks hollow with hunger, shuffles out of the mist.

Valdis’s lips part beneath her veil. ‘Go back, Mother, Mother. I told you. I warned you. I will take you down into the grave with me. I will make you suffer without end. You too, boy, go back while you can or I promise you will die a thousand deaths and still live to die again.’

Both Hinrik and the old woman shrink back in dread. They will not stand against him, but just as I fear they are slipping back into the mist, another figure emerges from the mist. She too is old. Her head streams with blood, but she raises her chin defiantly.

‘I stood against men of evil while I lived, I will stand against them in death.’

Hinrik and the old woman edge back out from the mist. I know now that they will stay.

Others are stepping into the space. A man carrying a little boy, both covered with savage slashes. A little girl follows, with blue-black marks about her neck, then a woman holding a baby that has been almost hacked in two. The woman’s mouth is gaping, stuffed with earth, as are her eyes. She has been rendered blind and dumb. Two more men and a woman join them. They too are slashed and mutilated. Their clothes are faded and ragged, smeared with soil. Their eyes are dark, hollow pits. They say nothing, but silently join the circle of the dead around us.

Then, when I think there are no more to come, one last figure emerges from the mist. He is an old man. His clothes are burned almost away. His face and limbs are charred and blistered, the blackened skin cracked, the flesh gaping red-raw to the white bone beneath. His mouth is sealed with a leather gag. Isabela gasps in horror. Throwing her arms up as a shield, she backs away from the ghastly phantasm that is hobbling towards her. But he holds out his hand, palm upwards. And there are hundreds of words written upon it, in blue and scarlet, green and gold. Words that scurry across his hand and tumble from the tips of his burnt fingers to lie in heaps around his blistered feet.

‘Jorge!’ Isabela breathes.

He nods solemnly and takes his place in the circle.

Valdis’s head swivels round to look at each of the dead in turn. I feel the draugr’s agitation, but I feel something else too. Someone is trying to cut through Valdis’s band. The draugr knows it. We must make haste.

‘I bid you welcome,’ I say. ‘You have been summoned as the door-doom, the court which must pass judgment upon one of your own. Your word is law. Your decision is binding. This is the complaint I bring against him. That he has entered the body of my sister without her consent. I have healed his own corpse, but he refuses to leave and return to it. I ask the door-doom to order him to leave my sister’s body and return to his own.’

The grandmother from the forest lifts her battered arm and points at Valdis.

‘Speak, draugr, what have you to say in your defence?’

‘Valdis is dead. She has no need of her corpse, but I have great need of it. I have every right to it, since I was called out of my grave by one who is living. If I return to my corpse, Eydis will destroy it. She will destroy me. She will send me back into the grave. You know how we suffer in the grave, our bodies rotting in the darkness, our loneliness, our despair. I was called out, and now I have tasted life again I will not return. You cannot order me to my own destruction. You are my brothers and sisters in death, you will not suffer the living to destroy us.’

The grandmother nods. ‘We have listened to you. And you, Eydis, you who are of the living, what do you say?’

‘If he remains in Valdis, he will make a draugr of us both, for if he is freed from the iron, he will gather such strength to him that I will not be able to fight against it. Valdis and I are joined, as we have been since we were in our mother’s womb. What he does in her body, he does also in mine. He will rampage throughout the land, bringing terror and destruction, he will make draugar of those he kills and he will torment those already in their graves. All this he will do, in a body that he does not own.’

‘Yes, yes,’ the dark voice hisses. ‘But you are the dead. You know the suffering that the living have inflicted on you. Look at your wounds, and the wounds of your children. Don’t you want revenge for what they did to you? Come with me and you shall have it. You shall make them plead for mercy and you will give them none as they gave none to you. You will tear their children apart before their eyes and tear out their wives’ hearts while they still beat. Jorge, Jorge, you will hear their screams like the sweetest music in your ears and drink their blood like the strongest wine to fire your belly. Hinrik, my poor Hinrik, wouldn’t you like to see the Danes running in terror from you? Make them know how fear tastes?’

‘Enough!’ the grandmother says. ‘We have listened and we have heard. Now each must judge for themselves.

‘You.’ She points to the old woman. ‘Your mummy has healed his corpse, what do you say?’

The old woman lifts a quavering hand, glancing fearfully at Valdis, whose head turns towards her.

‘Speak,’ the grandmother urges. ‘We all stand with you. Say only what you think to be right.’

‘He must return to his own corpse,’ the old woman whispers.

A howl of fury bursts from Valdis’s lips.

But the grandmother ignores him, relentlessly pointing to each of the dead in turn, adults and children alike. ‘My son, speak. Must he return to his own corpse?’

Their hollow eyes all stare at Valdis, as each of them pronounces their verdict.

‘He must return.’

‘He must return.’

The woman whose mouth is stuffed with earth can only nod, but her gesture is emphatic.

Finally, only Jorge is left to speak, but the grandmother points instead to Isabela.

‘He cannot speak. You must deliver the verdict for him. You must utter what is in his heart, not yours.’

Valdis rolls her head. The words that emerge from her lips are soft, coaxing. ‘He wants revenge, little Isabela, Isabela. You know he does. Jorge suffered the cruellest death of all of us. He was innocent. He has a right to justice. You can give him justice. You know what is in his heart. You know he does not want me to be destroyed. You know what he wants you to say for him. Just say it and that gag that chokes him will vanish. Say it and his wounds will be healed. Your own mother betrayed him, but you can help him, Isabela, Isabela. You can put right the wrong that was done to him. You can free him for all eternity.’

Jorge gives no sign. He stands, gazing at Isabela from out of his charred, blistered face, but nothing betrays his thoughts.

Isabela turns to me, anguish on her face. ‘Is it true, can I help him? Can I release him from that?’

The grandmother speaks again, ‘Say what is truly in his heart. Speak the truth, only the truth.’

‘But I don’t know what he is thinking, I don’t.’

‘What binds him to you, Isabela?’ I ask her. ‘How did you call him?’

‘I don’t know. I keep telling you, I don’t know. He didn’t give me a stone. I didn’t take a bone.’

Jorge raises his hand and the green and scarlet words slide from his fingers, drifting to the ground like falling leaves.

For a long moment, Isabela simply stares at the words lying at his feet.

‘Stories …’ she murmurs wonderingly. ‘He gave me stories that I still remember. That’s how I called him.’

She lifts her head and turns to look at Valdis as the others have done.

‘Jorge does not want revenge. He wants you to return.’

There is a shriek of fury. Valdis’s body is lashing backwards and forward, her blackened nails are clawing at my face. It takes all my strength to hold us both upright.

The grandmother lifts her voice over the draugr’s cries. ‘You have entered a body that is not yours to inhabit. You have stolen a life that is not yours to live. It is the verdict of the door-doom that you leave the body of Valdis now.’

There is a great howl that tears through our bodies as if Valdis is being ripped from my side. A black stream oozes from between her lips and passes through her veil, forming itself into a great black shadow. The shadow grows and spreads as if the white mist itself is staining black. It is denser and darker than any smoke. It pours from Valdis’s mouth like black blood gushing from a wound. It rises higher and higher until it towers over us, swelling up like a great black leech, breaking open the circle of the dead.

‘I will not obey the door-doom,’ the dark voice thunders. ‘You have no right to sit in judgment over me. I am living. I am the life that will destroy the living and the dead. I will not be destroyed.’

Isabela is cowering terrified on the floor beside me, the bone still gripped in her hands. I reach down and tear it from her fingers. I raise my arms and feel the power of a falcon’s wings. I know the courage of it in my heart as it plunges down in a stoop. I feel the grip of its talons in my soul, a grip that will not relinquish its hold even after death.

I lift my head and stare into the blackness writhing before me. ‘The door-doom of the dead has spoken. You are of the dead. You will obey. You will return to the body you owned in life. By the power of the white falcons who were our birth and shall be our death, I command you to return.’

I thrust the bone with its iron band straight into the centre of the black shadow. A bitter cold, such as I have never known, envelops my hand. My skin is withering in it. My bone is being eaten away, but still I push against the shadow.

‘No! No!’ he roars.

The cold is so intense that I cannot bear the pain of it. I cannot hold the bone in it any longer. I must let go. But if I do, he will win. He will never go and I will not be able to prevent him entering us again. I will become the darkness.

Just as I think I can bear no more, just as my hand is sliding out of the icy shadow, I feel the bone growing warm in my grasp. They are with me. The dead are still with me. We will defeat him. I throw back my head and a scream erupts from my throat.

‘Krery-krery-krery!’

The darkness shatters into a thousand tiny pieces. A great wind roars through the cave. The black shadow is caught up in it. For a moment or two the fragments are tossed helplessly in the maelstrom and then it is gone, leaving only a whirlpool of white steam swirling around us.





Ricardo



Check – when a falcon leaves the quarry it is supposed to be hunting to pursue some other prey.



A great roar filled the cave and then a high-pitched screech that was so painful it was like a dagger being thrust in each ear. It sounded as if two great beasts were hurling themselves at each other. Terrified, I looked up, and for a moment I thought I saw a crowd of people huddled together in the steam. Men and women I didn’t recognize, children too, all staring down at the sisters, and looking pretty much the worse for wear, I can tell you. Where on earth had they come from? But before I could do anything, the roaring and the screeching stopped abruptly and the people just sort of dissolved. Not that they were ever really there, of course, but it just shows how that damn heat was affecting us.

I suddenly realized I’d lost sight of Isabela and stared around frantically. Finally, I saw her lying behind Eydis. Her eyes were closed, and she was not moving. God in heaven, had Vítor carried out his threat and hit her over the head to knock her out? I crawled across to her and touched her gently on the arm. She sat bolt upright, an expression of alarm and bewilderment on her face, like someone who’s been woken suddenly from a sleep and can’t remember where they are. I knew that feeling only too well, especially on the morning after a good night in the tavern, but if ever there was a time for taking a little nap, this was most definitely not it.

I was so distracted by Isabela that it took me several moments to realize that Ari was shouting at me, gesturing to Valdis. I struggled over and knelt beside him. He had broken through the iron hoop, but his hands were shaking with exhaustion. The heat and moisture were making us as weak as newly hatched nestlings.

Valdis was perfectly still now, lolling away from her sister who was struggling to pull her upright so that Ari could wrench the band off. My fingers pressed against her skin as I tried to grasp the hoop and I felt again the dreadful coldness of her flesh. I snatched back my hand and found to my horror I’d ripped off a long strip of her yellow skin which was now stuck to my nails. But worse still, I realized the wound wasn’t bleeding.

‘She’s dead, Isabela. Sweet Jesu, she’s dead!’

‘I know,’ Isabela said faintly, ‘but … we have to free her … Eydis will be trapped in here with her. Try!’

I gritted my teeth, wrapped the blanket around my fingers and seized one side of the broken hoop. How could she be dead? It wasn’t possible. Just minutes before, I’d seen her thrashing around and heard her shouting. I could perfectly understand that her heart might have suddenly given out in the heat, mine was racing so hard, I was sure it too was about to collapse. But Valdis’s body wasn’t just dead, it was decaying.

‘I’ve already taken Fannar’s wife and daughters safely to the entrance of the cave,’ a voice said.

I glanced up to see Vítor standing over us.

‘Now it’s your turn, Isabela,’ Vítor said. ‘Come and I’ll guide you out and help you to climb the rocks.’

‘Can’t leave yet,’ Isabela said. ‘Have to help Eydis … We have to free them … we can’t leave them here.’

‘Ari and Marcos will bring the women as soon as they have released them. There’s nothing more you can do. We can only climb out one at a time. We must get out now in order to leave the gap clear for them. If you stay you will only hinder them getting to safety. Hurry, the steam is building, we haven’t got much time.’

He seized her arm and she turned towards him as if she had every intention of going with him.

‘No, don’t. We must all stay together,’ I protested. I scrambled to my feet and tried to make a grab for Isabela.

‘You may need help …’ Isabela was gasping in the suffocating steam, ‘getting the sisters out of the cave. If we’re on the outside … we can help pull her through the gap.’

‘Besides,’ Vítor said, ‘Fannar’s wife and daughters are out there unprotected … some of us should join them.’ He bent over coughing violently, struggling to regain his breath.

‘Then I’ll take Isabela out,’ I said, but Ari tugged weakly on my breeches. I glanced down at him.

He gestured urgently at the hoop. I could hear the water in the pool bubbling like a witch’s cauldron. Jets of boiling water were shooting up to the cave roof and crashing back down into the water with the roar of a deadly waterfall. I looked up and reached out to grab Isabela, but where she and Vítor had stood just a moment ago was nothing but swirling white steam.

‘Hjálpa! Hjálpa!’ Ari yelled at me, frantically clutching at my leg.

I crouched again and grabbed the iron ready for one last pull. Then, with a howl of fury, someone lunged towards us out of the steam. I just had time to glimpse the face of the man who minutes before had been lying unconscious in the corner. Ari sprang up and pushed himself between Eydis and the man, trying to fend him off.

‘Hjálpa Valdis!’ he yelled.

I grasped both ends of the iron hoop, trying to pull them apart, but my muscles had turned to water in the heat. The man slammed his arm across Ari’s chest with such a powerful blow that the boy was lifted clean off his feet and tossed backwards. I heard the sickening crump as his body hit the cave wall.

I felt the squeeze of Eydis’s hand on my leg and knew she was begging me to hurry, but before I could do anything the man had launched himself towards her. He threw his whole weight forward as he tried to seize Eydis. As his fingers reached for her throat, she jerked backwards, his hands missed her, his feet slipped on the wet rocks and he crashed face down to the cave floor and lay still.

Eydis fought to pull her sister’s body up, so that I could once more grab the iron band encircling Valdis’s waist. I seized it on either side of the break and pulled with a strength that could only have come from blind fear, and the iron band shattered.

‘Ari, where are you?’ I yelled into the swirling steam.

But I had the gut-wrenching feeling he couldn’t answer.

‘Isabela, are you there?’ I could see no one and nothing except for Eydis standing beside me clasping the body of her dead sister in her arms.

‘We’re here, Marcos,’ Isabela called from the other side of the cave. ‘No, no, Vítor. I don’t think that’s the right way.’

‘Let go of her, you bastard!’ I screamed. ‘Isabela, don’t trust him. He means to kill you. Get away from him, get away.’

I blundered over in the direction from which I’d heard Isabela’s voice, all thoughts of Ari forgotten. I had to get to her.

The steam cleared slightly just for a moment and I thought I could see two figures. But they were moving away from the passage towards the pool.

‘Stop, Isabela, stand still,’ I yelled. ‘The water, he’s taking you towards the water!’

She must have stopped then and tried to pull away from him, for I heard Vítor urging her to keep walking.

‘I’m trying to get you out, Isabela. I helped you in the forest, don’t you remember? You trusted me then. Trust me now. I helped Fannar’s wife out. I know the way. Come on now, take my hand. That’s right. Only a few more steps and you’ll be in the passage.’

I tried to run, but the ground was too slippery and I stumbled, falling down on my knees.

There was a roar behind me. The man who had attacked Ari came lumbering out of the steam to the side of me. Then he vanished again into the whiteness. Ahead of me I heard Vítor yell and Isabela scream.

I struggled to my feet, slipping and sliding until I finally managed to reach them. The man and Vítor were locked in a struggle. Vítor had drawn a knife, but the man had his arm pinned so that he couldn’t use it. He was clearly far stronger, but he was having difficulty keeping a foothold on the wet rocky floor.

I grabbed Isabela. ‘Come on, this way.’

‘But we can’t leave Vítor, and what about Ari and Eydis?’ She turned back to peer hopelessly into the swirling clouds.

‘I have them safe,’ a calm voice said. A tall, stately woman stepped out of the mist behind me. She was carrying an unconscious Ari in her arms as easily as she might have carried a child. Eydis followed her. My brain was reeling so much in the heat, I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined her, like the crowd of other people I thought I’d seen.

‘Isabela, we must leave now,’ I begged her.

‘But Vítor … that man is killing him,’ Isabela said desperately, half-choking in the steam, but still trying to move towards the place where we’d last seen them.

‘No, Isabela. Leave them,’ I pleaded. I tried to pull her but she resisted, pushing my slippery fingers easily from her arm.

The cave suddenly shook again

The tall woman turned. ‘This way now before it is too late.’

We didn’t stop to ask questions, even Isabela didn’t protest. How the woman could find her way so surely through the hot dense fog, I didn’t know. But if she knew where the entrance was I certainly wasn’t going to argue with her. I couldn’t even tell which way we were facing any more.

I found the rocky outcrop that led to the passage by dint of colliding with it. Ignoring my bruises, I reached out blindly for Isabela. She grasped my hand and together we groped our way around the rock until we reached the passage. Steam filled the narrow tunnel but, protected by the outcrop of rock and with the entrance above to vent it, it was much less dense. More rocks had been dislodged in the last shaking, but there was still a way up. The tall woman went first. Ari slung over her shoulder, she climbed up as effortlessly as a man might climb his own staircase. She lifted Ari up as high as she could, then pushed him up through the slit at the top, before scrambling out after him.

I wanted to make Isabela climb out next, but she hung back.

‘Let Eydis go first, we might have to help her.’

I hesitated, but Eydis had already started to climb, one arm around her dead sister’s body, using the other arm to pull them both up over the rocks. At the final boulder she hesitated. The only way both sisters would fit through the hole together was if she clasped her sister’s body to her own as tightly as she could, but Valdis’s head was lolling backwards. Eydis had to use both hands, one to hold up the weight of the torso and flopping arms, the other to press her sister’s dead head against her own neck. That meant she had no hands free to heave herself up over the edge.

I couldn’t see how she’d manage to get out by herself. I would have to climb up and help her. The slit was so narrow, if she became stuck, we would all be trapped. I clambered up the rocks until I was just below Eydis. A pair of arms which I presumed belonged to the tall woman reached down through the gap to grasp Eydis under her armpits. I braced my back against the wall, trying not to think about the narrow ledge I was balancing on so precariously. I tried to work my shoulder under Eydis so that I could push her up. For the moment nothing happened. I squealed as I felt one of my feet sliding towards the edge of the ledge, and wildly flailed about, trying to grab hold of something. Then the weight lifted from my shoulder and I saw Eydis disappearing into the darkness above.

At once the woman’s arm reached down again for me, and I grasped it thankfully. But as I stretched up with my other hand, the strap of my scrip around my waist snagged on the sharp rock. I felt the leather give way and the scrip containing all the money I possessed in the world tumbled into the billowing stream below. I could have howled, but there was nothing I could do to retrieve it. All that mattered now was getting out.

I looked down into the white mist. ‘Come on, Isabela, climb up now and we’ll pull you out.’

I heaved myself over the edge of the opening, gasping at the shock of the night air after the heat of the cave. I felt as if I’d been plunged into an icy river.

A distant cry rose up from the hole below. Shivering uncontrollably in the cold, I peered down into the pit. But all I could see was swirling white steam.

‘Isabela, are you hurt? Have you fallen? Are you able to climb …? Stay where you are, I’m coming back down for you.’

I was already scrambling back over the lip of the entrance again when I heard another anguished cry ring out from somewhere deep within the cave.

‘Marcos!’

I leaned over, staring down the shaft into the steam-filled passageway far below me. For a few moments I could see nothing. Then I began to glimpse fragments of something dark moving through the white mist. Someone was heaving themselves up the ladder of rocks towards the opening.

‘Isabela!’ I called. ‘Come on, you’re nearly at the top. I can see you. Reach up to me. Take my hand and I’ll pull you out!’

I stretched down through the slit as far as I could, trying to grasp her. Then I snatched my hand back as if it had been stung. For the face that was staring up at me from the dark pit was not Isabela’s. It was Vítor’s. He was clinging to a rocky ledge in the shaft, just an arm’s length below me.

‘Where’s Isabela?’ I yelled. ‘What have you done with her?’

‘Me?’ Vítor was panting hard, gasping for breath. ‘I’ve … done nothing. That man … has taken her down into the cave … nasty temper … she won’t be troubling us agai …’

His voice broke off in a cry of fear as the ground began to shake violently. He flung his arm up in a desperate attempt to grab the rim of the slit and haul himself out, but he never got the chance. For just as he made to grasp it, his other hand slipped from the juddering rock, and with a scream, he fell backwards, crashing down into the passageway below.

I jerked my leg out from the hole just as a great billow of steam shot up from it, and I lost my balance and found myself rolling backwards down the steep hillside in a hail of small stones and dirt. I tried desperately to stop my fall, but only succeeded when my body crashed into a boulder. I lay there, winded, fighting to force the air back into my lungs. With a frantic effort, I finally managed to draw breath.

The ground had stopped shaking though stones were still trickling down. I heard my name being called over and over again, softly in the night sky. But I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to. It was over. Isabela was lying dead, buried somewhere deep beneath me, and though I had never shed a single tear for Silvia, I suddenly found that I was crying, howling into the night, and I couldn’t seem to stop.





Eydis



At hack – when a falcon is left to fly free for a few weeks to improve its condition, returning to the hack board twice a day to be fed by the falconer.



It has been so many years since I have breathed the cold fresh air, or seen the purple clouds in the black sky, swollen and silver-edged, where the moonlight touches them. Time has flooded back into my life as swiftly as once it had drained from it. Here was night and in time … in time there would be dawn and day, sun and sunset, winter and spring. I stand transfixed, gazing up into the vast arch of stars, and drinking the sharp frosted air that tastes as if it is squeezed from the sweetest berries.

A groan from Ari makes me glance down. He is struggling to sit up, rubbing the lump on the back of his head.

‘How did I get out here?’

I look round for Heidrun, but she has vanished. I smile to myself. I knew she would not stay to be thanked.

‘The nightstalker … did it get out?’

‘No, thanks to the girl, he did not.’

‘Isabela … where is she?’ Ari tries to peer over my shoulder.

Unnur crouches down beside him, anxiously feeling his limbs and head, as she would if one of her own children had taken a tumble.

‘I am afraid she is still down there, Ari,’ she whispers.

Ari struggles up. ‘I must go back, find her.’

Unnur tries to hold him down. ‘No, Ari, you have a bad bruise on your head, suppose you become dizzy again and fall.’

But he pushes aside her hands and clambers to his feet. Steam is no longer pouring from the entrance. The slit is dark and still. Ari leans over.

‘Isabela! Isabela!’

We listen, but there is no answering cry beneath us. Ari slips one leg over the edge, feeling around with his foot for the outcrop of rock on which to stand.

This time it is me who holds him back. ‘If the draugr is still alive down there …’

‘Then I shall fight him. I will not leave her corpse down there for him to torment her spirit as he would have done yours. I have to bring her body out. That is the last thing I can do for her … But I can’t feel the ledge. It’s gone. It must have collapsed. What –’

I press my fingers to his mouth. ‘Listen. I hear something.’

We all stand and hold our breath.

Ari shakes his head. ‘It was just the wind blowing over the hole.’

The voice is faint, but this time we both hear it, a cry for help.

Ari hastily pulls his leg out and leans as far as he can into the crack.

‘Isabela!’

Ari lifts his head from the hole. ‘The rocks inside the tunnel fell and blocked off the cave. That must be why there’s no more steam coming out, but some of the boulders have fallen from the entrance too. She can get up part of the way, but she can’t reach the opening.’

‘We’ll have to find something to pull her out with,’ Unnur says.

‘I have something,’ a deep voice says behind us. We turn to see Fannar clambering up the last few yards towards us. Unnur and his daughters race towards him and throw themselves into his arms. He hugs them fiercely, examining each face in turn, anxious to assure himself they are well.

‘I saw the steam rising from the mountain, and felt the ground shake. I was so afraid …’ His voice is gruff with tears, but he coughs, striking his chest vigorously as if it is just the cold night air that is catching at his throat.

‘Did I hear you say the foreign girl is still down there?’

He shrugs a thick coil of rope off his shoulder and begins to fasten one end around his waist.

‘I thought we might need help getting you out, Eydis, so I borrowed this from one of the farms. The owner doesn’t know, but I will repay him the worth of it someday. Here!’ He tosses the other end to Ari. ‘Make a loop in it and drop it down to her. We need to make haste – if the earth shakes again, the whole passageway might collapse.’

They work as swiftly as they can, Ari and Fannar hauling together, but still it seems to be a lifetime before we glimpse the whiteness of a hand emerging from the hole. Unnur lies flat on her belly and grasps it. But just as Isabela’s fingers close around Unnur’s, there is another great shudder beneath our feet, a dreadful rumble of rocks crashing down below. Ari and Fannar both lose their balance and fall. The rope goes slack, but Unnur does not let go of Isabela’s hand. Fannar manages to haul himself up on to his knees and with one last great heave, Isabela slips out of the crack and lies panting and sobbing with relief on the hillside, Unnur crooning over her and Ari standing beside them both, beaming.

We all crouch on the ground, trying to recover our breath, fearful to stand in case the mountain trembles again.

Unnur clutches her two daughters to her. ‘The wounded man, you had to leave him?’

It is Ari who answers. ‘He was not a man. I know now that he was a nightstalker. I should have left him to die again on the road when those Danes overpowered him, but I would not believe it. After you and the girls got out, he rose up and tried to attack Eydis in the cave … all of us.’ Ari ruefully rubs the lump on the back of his head.

Fannar whistles through his teeth. ‘A draugr … is it possible? I have heard of them, my own father told me about one who plagued one of the neighbouring farms for many years, but I have never encountered one. Who raised him?’

Ari glances at me.

‘From what Ari tells me,’ I say, ‘I am sure it was the Lutheran pastor who buried his companions. It is my belief he was to have been sent to one of the families the pastor suspected of still holding the Mass. Ari said the man was wearing a crucifix. The Danes thought he was a Catholic. He would have taken work with one of the secret Catholic families, and they, thinking he was of the same faith, would in time have invited him to one of the secret Masses.’

‘Ari found him on the road to my farm,’ Fannar says gravely.

I nod. ‘Doubtless he was raised to use his strength to kill all those at the Mass by bringing the place crashing down on them or else burn it with them trapped inside. A draugr often destroys with fire. But the pastor did not know the strength of the creature he was raising. His power was far beyond anything the pastor could control.’

Unnur clutches her two daughters tighter to her, shuddering. Memories of what the Danes had done to her home haunt her face.

For a moment or two Fannar is silent, but where the moonlight catches the side of his face I can see his jaw clenching in anger. ‘And the two foreign men?’ he says finally.

‘Marcos escaped safely,’ I tell him, ‘but he tumbled down the hill when the mountain stirred. He may be hurt or unable to find his way back. We must search for him.’

Ari crouches down beside Isabela who is now sitting up, her legs drawn up to her chest, hugging herself against the cold. ‘Vítor?’

She points down at the crack, and shivers.

Fannar leans over the hole and calls several times in his deep, booming voice, but there is no reply. ‘If he was still alive, he would have called out. If he was crushed by those falling rocks, there is no hope. Let him rest there in peace. There is no sense in any of us risking our lives to bring up a corpse, only to bury it again.’

‘But he will not rest in peace if the draugr lies down there,’ Ari protested.

Fannar crosses himself. ‘I am sorry for it, but I will not risk the draugr taking you too.’ He seizes the hand of his younger daughter. ‘We must get away from here. If the ground shakes again it might dislodge other boulders, and steam may blow out through other vents. I’ve seen it happen before.’

We pick our way down the mountainside. I balance the cold body of my sister in the crook of my arm. I am unused to walking on grass. I slip several times. Long ago, Valdis and I wrapped our arms about each other’s waists and ran blithely down slopes, laughing if we tumbled, and rolling over for the sheer joy of it. Now I am tired and afraid; these legs which once easily carried us both now feel weak and leaden, as if poison is slowly creeping into them. They can no longer bear the weight of two.

I feel a warm arm about me, and Valdis’s weight is lifted from my arm. Ari is walking next to her, helping me to hold up the sagging body. It takes courage to embrace a corpse, and a good measure of kindness too.

We find Marcos towards the bottom of the slope or rather he finds us, by the stones we dislodge as we scramble down. He seems unharmed, though no doubt bruised, but judging from his heavy tread, and the sagging of his shoulders, he does not rejoice that he is alive. He barely glances up as he approaches us.

‘Marcos?’ Isabela steps out from behind Fannar.

Marcos’s head jerks up and he gapes at her open-mouthed, as if her ghost has just risen up from the ground. He stands transfixed for a moment, then he rushes at her, his arms wide as if he is going to hug her. But at the last moment he lets them fall, and stands mumbling something, staring at his hands.

Fannar leads us through the pass into a high valley. We rest then, making a hasty meal of some dried meat he has also stolen, holding the fragments in our mouths, sucking them until they are moistened enough to chew. Above us tiny clouds are drifting away as if on a tide and the bright white stars prickle above us in the dark sky. I marvel at them once more. I had forgotten how many there are up there, like a black pool teeming with shoals of little silver fish. The stars blur into one as tears swim in my eyes. I wish Valdis had lived to see them too, just one last time.

‘It’s not safe to trust to the deep caves while the mountains are stirring,’ Fannar says at length, ‘but there is an old abandoned farmstead I know of, a day’s journey from here. Most of it is in ruins, but the badstofa was built far back into the hillside and the floor dug deep. If we can get in through the entrance, the hall should be sound enough to shelter us, and if the place seems ruined, so much the better. As long as we are careful with the fire, we should be able to hide there for the winter at least.’

‘But how will we feed the children?’ Unnur wails. ‘Everything we put down for winter is gone, the beasts too.’

Fannar squeezes his wife’s shoulder. ‘First we find shelter, then we worry about food. I am becoming an expert thief, though it is not a skill I ever thought to master, and I was good at catching birds when I was a boy, no doubt I can do it again. There’ll be a place of honour at our fireside for you, Eydis, of course, and the foreigners too.’

‘You are a good man, Fannar,’ I tell him. ‘But I will not be coming with you. We must part now. My sister is dead, and I swore I would lay her to rest at the river of blue ice. I must find it. I have been away from it for so long. I was only a child when I was brought into the cave, but the mountains don’t change. I will find the way again. As for Isabela, she seeks the white falcons. She must not rest until she finds them, for the lives of many depend upon it. She has done all I have asked of her, and with courage. Without her, the draugr could not have been defeated, and no man, woman or child on this isle would be safe. I vowed that I would help her find what she seeks and I will not break my oath to her.’

Ari nods gravely, then turns to Fannar, biting his lip.

‘Fannar, I’m bound to you for the season, but I beg you to release me from that, or at least give me leave to depart for a while. I’ll guide Eydis to the blue river and then help the girl catch the white falcon. She can’t do it alone, and Eydis …’ He breaks off awkwardly. I know he is thinking that I will be of little use when it comes to climbing cliffs.

I smile. ‘No, lad,’ I say. ‘Fannar needs you now more than ever. It will take both your strengths to see this family safe through winter, and if he should fall ill, Unnur cannot manage alone. If they are to build themselves a new life, you must be as a son to them. You cannot desert them now; they have been good to you. I will be led to the river of ice and I will guide Isabela too. I will always be there to guide her.’

Ari sighs, but he does not protest. I know he still blames himself for the draugr and will do anything he is commanded to do to make amends. Fannar and Unnur exchange looks of sheer relief at the news that Ari is staying with them, though I know Fannar would have willingly let the boy go if I had told him I needed him.

‘But Eydis,’ Unnur says, ‘your sister is joined to you. How will you lay her to rest in the river? Can she be cut from you?’

I smile beneath my veil. ‘When the time comes, the way will be shown to me.’