The Islands of the Blessed

Chapter Twenty-three THE SACRIFICIAL STONE

Jack pulled his cloak tighter and listened to Thorgil declaim poetry at the prow of the ship. They wore thick woolen mantles treated with oil to keep the rain out. All day they had encountered storms. None of these lasted long, but no one could settle into a steady work rhythm. It was “Up oars,” “Down oars,” “More sail,” “Less sail,” and “Aegir’s armpits! That was a big wave!” They were in a sunny period now, but the wind was full of ice.

“You can count on Thorgil to make bad weather worse,” Jack observed.

“Northmen believe in facing things head-on,” said the Bard. He was comfortably wrapped in fleece over his usual white robe. The wind had burnished his face to a rosy glow.

They had left the hidden port two days before, after the betrothal ceremony. Egil’s cargo had been stored there with half of Egil’s crew to guard it. Egil’s ship and the rest of the men had gone south to deliver the grain.

Ydgith had established herself as queen of this tiny outpost, with Ymma and Ythla as her princesses. By the time Egil had gone south and Skakki north, she had managed to get her own hut, a supply of food, and new clothes for herself and her daughters. Her last words to Schlaup were, “Remember to get me freshwater pearls up north. I understand they’re common there.”

Thorgil continued to describe the miseries of sailing until Eric Pretty-Face bellowed, “BLOODY HEL! THAT’S THE THIRD TIME YOU’VE DESCRIBED FREEZING TO DEATH. SING ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE!” The shield maiden stalked off to sit by Schlaup in the middle of the ship.

“I like frost,” the giant said to cheer her up. “Fonn and Forath used to take me on picnics in the frost.”

“You miss them, don’t you?” Thorgil said.

Schlaup nodded. “When I marry…” He paused to marshal the words in his head, then continued, “I will take Ydgith to Jotunheim. To meet Mother.”

Jack choked back a laugh. He could imagine Mrs. Tanner’s reaction to her new mother-in-law, a nine-foot-tall mountain queen with bristly orange hair and fangs.

The shadow of the great bird Seafarer crossed the deck, made a lazy circle, and floated north again. The albatross had proven to be a most valuable crew member. He could see the coast when they couldn’t. He brought back information of islands, lonely villages, and inlets where they might spend the night without being discovered.

The Northmen’s knowledge of the coast was imperfect. Even Rune’s memory contained information only about the few places he had visited, and so Seafarer guided them most of the time. On the first day he directed them to a run of herring so dense, the ship was unable to move until the run passed. The Northmen dipped the fish out with nets, and Seafarer gorged himself until he was too heavy to fly.

That night they ate to their hearts’ content and fell asleep around a roaring fire. But the next it rained, and they shivered under oilskins until dawn.

Thorgil pointed out a few of the places she recognized. “Those are the old strongholds of the Picts,” she said, pointing at solitary round towers on the distant hills. “Rune thinks they’re deserted now.” It was a wild and forbidding coast, with many cracks opening up to the sea. The waves sent spray high into these channels, while between them cliffs jutted out like teeth.

“I have seen lights in those towers when all else was asleep,” the Bard said, shading his eyes against the afternoon sun. “I have heard the huushayuu call to arms where no army has marched for countless years.”

“What’s a huushayuu?” said Jack, repressing a shiver. The word had a breathy sound that recalled evil memories.

“The Pictish war trumpet,” the old man replied. Jack remembered darkness falling over a slave market long ago and men whose bodies seemed to writhe with vines. “The huushayuu was half as tall as a man, and its voice carried over vast distances. There was never only one of them. The Picts always had ten or twenty trumpeters, for the sound alone made an enemy’s heart melt within him. The Romans called it a ‘carnyx’.”

“Olaf had an old carnyx hanging on his wall,” Thorgil recalled. “It was shaped like a striking snake with a boar’s head. He refused to let anyone touch it because he’d found it in a tomb.”

The Bard gazed with dislike at the distant towers gliding by. “That was a Roman copy. A true huushayuu has the head of a Pictish beast. The jaw is hinged with a metal tongue inside.”

Seafarer returned with the report that a deserted bay lay just ahead, and Skakki gave the order to turn toward land. The Bard quickly canceled that order. “We should go north until the light fails,” he said. “If we don’t find a harbor, it is still better to lie out at sea than approach that shore.”

They left the round towers behind, and the cliffs became ever steeper and more jagged. Finally, just as the last band of red faded in the western sky, they came to a white sandy beach. It lay before a peaceful valley ringed by hills, and the Bard pronounced it fit for habitation.

Schlaup dragged the ship above the high tide mark all by himself. He was hopeless at many chores. He rowed too powerfully to work with others and couldn’t navigate across a mud puddle. But where strength was concerned, there was no matching him.

“What does a carnyx sound like?” Jack said later, when they had eaten and were stretched out under the stars. He was unwilling to use the Pictish word huushayuu.

“That’s not a question one should ask in the dark,” the Bard said. “I will tell you this: The sound of a carnyx is like the cry of a Pictish beast. You’ll hear it soon enough on the borders of Notland.” The old man turned his back and refused to speak any more.

In the morning they came to the port where Jack and Lucy had almost been sold as slaves. Jack had been so sunk in misery at the time that he hadn’t noticed much about the place. He was amazed to learn that this was Edwin’s Town. All his life he’d heard about it—how grand it was, how it had a king. Now he saw that it wasn’t much larger than Bebba’s Town. It even had a grim fortress like the old Din Guardi before it was destroyed.

Next to the water were extensive wharves, and these accounted for the greater wealth of Edwin’s Town. It was a trading center. Ships came from the south with salt, fine cloth, glazed pottery, hunting dogs, and cheese. From across the sea sailed Frisian traders with spices, oil, and wine. From the north came amber and furs. And, of course, slaves. Everyone traded in slaves.

When Skakki first docked, a number of townspeople asked him what he had “in stock”. “Nothing now,” he said, glancing at Jack. “See me next year.”

The boy went for a long walk by himself to cool his temper. He knew what kind of stock the Northmen carried. Three years ago—was it only three years?—he’d been washed in the cold sea and scrubbed with vile-smelling soap that almost took his skin off. His hair had been combed for lice. Then his skin had been rubbed with oil to give it a healthy sheen, just as a horse might be currycombed for market. He’d been given as much bread and stew as he could eat. A slave bloated with food, Olaf often said, was easier to sell.

Jack shivered with disgust at both the Northmen and himself. By now he was beyond the wharves and among houses. The land went up into a shallow valley with mountains on either side. Long, narrow fields were separated from each other by ridges or hawthorn hedges. Birds flew in and out, chirruping and warbling.

Jack sat on a long, tumbled-over stone by a hedge. To his right a cone of rock, sliced off at the top, bore the dark fortress. The Bard said it was called Din Eidyn and was a companion to Din Guardi. It, too, had existed since time out of mind. It had been built when the Forest Lord still ruled the green earth and the Man in the Moon had not been banished to the sky.

A mist began to gather, the kind of sea fog called “haar” that could roll in swiftly and unexpectedly. Jack didn’t move. He liked it here in the clean air above the smell of dead fish and Northman boots. He drew his cloak tighter and covered his head with the hood. A honeybee landed on his knee, struck down by the sudden cold. He moved it gently to the hedge.

Between him and the fortress loomed a ravine. Now it was filled with haar, so that the rock cone appeared to float on a milky lake. Jack heard the clank of cowbells and the distant call of herdsmen. The animals must have been wending their way from higher pastures to the safety of barns. It must have been later than he thought; certainly the sky was growing darker.

The fog overflowed the ravine and crept up toward Din Eidyn. It was advancing up the valley behind him too. By now the wharves and sea had entirely vanished. Yet Jack still preferred to stay where he was. His arms and legs felt heavy.

The haar drifted over him, dewing his face with cold droplets. He was enclosed in a room of air, for a few feet away in any direction lay fog. All he could see was the fallen stone, a corner of the hedge, and grass.

The stone. Jack felt it with his fingers. It wasn’t merely a chunk of rock; it was richly carved with symbols. He recognized a mirror and a comb—odd things to carve, he thought. There was also—the light was growing faint and he had to bend down to see it—a strange beast with a long mouth and legs curled beneath it. And another beast that reminded him of the carnyx the Bard had described. At the far end was an ornately decorated crescent moon intersected by a broken arrow.

Jack turned even colder than the chill that surrounded him. He’d seen that symbol before on Brother Aiden’s chest. Father Severus had said the crescent stood for the Man in the Moon and the broken arrow for the Forest Lord. The two together meant Brother Aiden, then only a lost child in a forest, had been chosen for human sacrifice.

Jack tried to get up, but the haar was pressing in on all sides. He struggled to breathe. Cold tendrils of fog reached into his mouth and filled his throat. He lay facedown on the stone. The rough granite pushed up against his chest and a weight pressed down on his back.

A small creature crept over the stone. Jack could just make it out from the corner of his eye. It was the honeybee. It was no longer than a fingernail, yet with a bee’s yearning for sunlight it strove to escape the deadening cold. It moved slowly, laboriously, and when it reached Jack’s face, he smelled honey. It climbed upward until he couldn’t see it anymore. It reached his temple and stabbed down.

Pain roared through his senses. He sprang up, all sleepiness gone, and saw that the mist directly above him had opened up. The sky was full of stars. Jack sucked in air until he thought his lungs would burst. He heard heavy footsteps pounding up the valley. In the next instant Schlaup grabbed him and sped away with the boy tucked under his arm.

Jack saw only a blur of houses and streets before they were back at the wharves. Schlaup jumped aboard, making the ship tilt so violently that the sailors had to grab boxes to keep them from sliding off the deck. “I got him! I got him!” the giant cried, putting Jack down.

Skakki shouted to cast off, and the Northmen pushed away with their oars. The Bard crouched beside Jack, feeling his head. “Thank Freya he found you before the tide turned,” the old man said. “We couldn’t possibly hide Schlaup for another day. Too many people kept looking at the ship and asking what we were carrying.”

Jack found that his throat was sore, as though he’d been shouting for a long time. “How did you hide him?”

“We threw a tarp over him,” said Thorgil. “Skakki told everyone he was a heap of grain bags.”

“I’m cargo,” Schlaup said, pointing at his chest.

“You’re much more than that,” said the Bard. “What possessed you, Jack, to go off without telling anyone?”

Jack saw that the first streaks of dawn were appearing in the eastern sky. He realized he’d been gone most of the previous day and all of the night. “I went for a walk…. I’m not sure what happened next.”

The Bard felt his head again. “That’s better. Warmth is coming back. Did you fall asleep in a field, or what?”

Jack described the stone and the sudden appearance of haar. The sea and sky had by now lightened to that predawn color that makes it impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. It was like sailing through dark blue air. “I thought only an hour had passed,” he said.

“When you didn’t appear, we began to worry,” the Bard said. “We searched everywhere, and at midnight I gave Schlaup a whiff of your old boots. He came back straightaway, saying he’d lost the scent near Din Eidyn. I sent him out again. It was an unusually clear night with no fog at all. Are you sure about the haar?”

“Very sure.” Jack felt something small lodged in the neck of his tunic and felt with his fingers. He drew out a tiny, furry body. “The honeybee,” he remembered. “It stung me and I woke up.”

The Bard cupped the insect between his hands and whispered to it in the Blessed Speech. “Now fly you safely home with the gods’ protection,” he said aloud. He opened his hands and the bee flew away, or perhaps it was only blown away by the wind. Jack wasn’t sure. It was such a little creature.