The Last Light of the Sun

ONE

A horse, he came to understand, was missing. Until it was found nothing could proceed. The island marketplace was crowded on this grey morning in spring. Large, armed, bearded men were very much present, but they were not here for trade. Not today. The market would not open, no matter how appealing the goods on a ship from the south might be.

He had arrived, clearly, at the wrong time.

Firaz ibn Bakir, merchant of Fezana, deliberately embodying in his brightly coloured silks (not nearly warm enough in the cutting wind) the glorious Khalifate of Al-Rassan, could not help but see this delay as yet another trial imposed upon him for transgressions in a less than virtuous life.

It was hard for a merchant to live virtuously. Partners demanded profit, and profit was difficult to come by if one piously ignored the needs—and opportunities—of the world of the flesh. The asceticism of a desert zealot was not, ibn Bakir had long since decided, for him.

At the same time, it would be entirely unfair to suggest that he lived a life of idleness and comfort. He had just endured (with such composure as Ashar and the holy stars had granted him) three storms on the very long sea journey north and then east, afflicted, as always at sea, by a stomach that heaved like the waves, and with the roundship handled precariously by a continuously drunken captain. Drinking was a profanation of the laws of Ashar, of course, but in this matter ibn Bakir was not, lamentably, in a position to take a vigorous moral stand.

Vigour had been quite absent from him on the journey, in any case.

It was said among the Asharites, both in the eastern home-lands of Ammuz and Soriyya, and in Al-Rassan, that the world of men could be divided into three groups: those living, those dead, and those at sea.

Ibn Bakir had been awake before dawn this morning, praying to the last stars of the night in thanks for his finally being numbered once more among those in the blessed first group.

Here in the remote, pagan north, at this wind-scoured island market of Rabady, he was anxious to begin trading his leather and cloth and spices and bladed weapons for furs and amber and salt and heavy barrels of dried cod (to sell in Ferrieres on the way home)—and to take immediate leave of these barbarian Erlings, who stank of fish and beer and bear grease, who could kill a man In a bargaining over prices, and who burned their leaders—savages that they were—on ships among their belongings when they died.

This last, it was explained to him, was what the horse was all about. Why the funeral rites of Halldr Thinshank, who had governed Rabady until three nights ago, were currently suspended, to the visible consternation of an assembled multitude of warriors and traders.

The offence to their gods of oak and thunder, and to the lingering shade of Halldr (not a benign man in life, and unlikely to be so as a spirit), was considerable, ibn Bakir was told. Ill omens of the gravest import were to be assumed. No one wanted an angry, unhoused ghost lingering in a trading town. The fur-clad, weapon-bearing men in the windy square were worried, angry, and drunk, pretty much to a man.

The fellow doing the explaining, a bald-headed, ridiculously big Erling named Ofnir, was known to ibn Bakir from two previous journeys. He had been useful before, for a fee: the Erlings were ignorant, tree-worshipping pagans, but they had firm ideas about what their services were worth.

Ofnir had spent some years in the east among the Emperor's Karchite Guard in Sarantium. He had returned home with a little money, a curved sword in a jewelled scabbard, two prominent scars (one on top of his head), and an affliction contracted in a brothel near the Sarantine waterfront. Also, a decent grasp of that difficult eastern tongue. In addition—usefully—he'd mastered sufficient words in ibn Bakir's own Asharite to function as an interpreter for the handful of southern merchants foolhardy enough to sail along rocky coastlines fighting a lee shore, and then east into the frigid, choppy waters of these northern seas to trade with the barbarians.

The Erlings were raiders and pirates, ravaging in their long-ships all through these lands and waters and—increasinglydown south. But even pirates could be seduced by the lure of trade, and Firaz ibn Bakir (and his partners) had reaped profit from that truth. Enough so to have him back now for a third time, standing in a knife-like wind on a bitter morning, waiting for them to get on with burning Halldr Thinshank on a boat with his weapons and armour and his best household goods and wooden images of the gods and one of his slave girls… and a horse.

A pale grey horse, a beauty, Halldr's favourite, and missing. On a very small island.

Ibn Bakir looked around. A sweeping gaze from the town square could almost encompass Rabady. The harbour, a stony beach, with a score of Erling ships and his own large roundship from the south—the first one in, which ought to have been splendid news. This town, sheltering several hundred souls perhaps, was deemed an important market in the northlands, a fact that brought private amusement to the merchant from Fezana, a man who had been received by the khalif in Cartada, who had walked in the gardens and heard the music of the fountains there.

No fountains here. Beyond the stockade walls and the ditch surrounding them, a quilting of stony farmland could be seen, then livestock grazing, then forest. Beyond the pine woods, he knew, the sea swept round again, with the rocky mainland of Vinmark across the strait. More farms there, fisher-villages along the coast, then emptiness: mountains and trees for a very long way, to the places where the reindeer ran (they said) in herds that could not be numbered, and the men who lived among them wore antlers themselves to hunt, and practised magics with blood in the winter nights.

Ibn Bakir had written these stories down during his last long journey home, had told them to the khalif at an audience in Cartada, presented his writings along with gifts of fur and amber. He'd been given gifts in return: a necklace, an ornamental dagger. His name was known in Cartada now.

It occurred to him that it might be useful to observe and chronicle this funeral—if the accursed rites ever began.

He shivered. It was cold in the blustering wind. An untidy dump of men made their way towards him, tacking across the square as if they were on a ship together. One man stumbled and bumped another; the second one swore, pushed back, put a hand to his axe. A third intervened, and took a punch to the shoulder for his pains. He ignored it like an insect bite. Another big man. They were all, ibn Bakir thought sorrowfully, big men.

It came to him, belatedly, that this was not really a good time to be a stranger on Rabady Isle, with the governor (they used an Erling word, but it meant, as best ibn Bakir could tell, something very like a governor) dead and his funeral rites marred by a mysteriously missing animal. Suspicions might fall.

As the group approached, he spread his hands, palms up, and brought them together in front of him. He bowed formally. someone laughed. Someone stopped directly in front of him, reached out, unsteadily, and fingered the pale yellow silk of ibn Bakir's tunics, leaving a smear of grease. Ofnir, his interpreter, said something in their language and the others laughed again. Ibn Bakir, alert now, believed he detected an easing of tension. He had no idea what he'd do if he was wrong.

The considerable profit you could make from trading with barbarians bore a direct relation to the dangers of the journey—and the risks were not only at sea. He was the youngest partner, investing less than the others, earning his share by being the one who travelled… by allowing thick, rancid-smelling barbarian fingers to tug at his clothing while he smiled and bowed and silently counted the hours and days till the roundship might leave, its hold emptied and refilled.

"They say," Ofnir spoke slowly, in the loud voice one used with the simple-minded, "it is now known who take Halldr horse." His breath, very close to ibn Bakir, smelled of herring and beer.

His tidings, however, were entirely sweet. It meant they didn't think the trader from Al-Rassan, the stranger, had anything to do with it. Ibn Bakir had been dubious about his ability, with two dozen words in their tongue and Ofnir's tenuous skills, to make the obvious point that he'd just arrived the afternoon before and had no earthly (or other) reason to impede local rites by stealing a horse. These were not men currently in a condition to assess cogency of argument.

"Who did it?" Ibn Bakir was only mildly curious.

"Servant to Halldr. Sold to him. Father make wrong killing. Sent away. Son have no right family now."

Lack of family appeared to be an explanation for theft here, ibn Bakir thought wryly. That seemed to be what Ofnir was conveying. He knew someone back home who would find this diverting over a glass of good wine.

"So he took the horse? Where? Into the woods?" Ibn Bakir gestured at the pines beyond the fields.

Ofnir shrugged. He pointed out into the square. Ibn Bakir saw that men were now mounting horses there—not always smoothly—and riding towards the open town gate and the plank bridge across the ditch. Others ran or walked beside them. He heard shouts. Anger, yes, but also something else: zest, liveliness. The promise of sport.

"He will soon found," Ofnir said, in what passed here in the northlands for Asharite.

Ibn Bakir nodded. He watched two men gallop past. One screamed suddenly as he passed and swung his axe in vicious, whistling circles over his head, for no evident reason.

"What will they do to him?" he asked, not caring very much. Ofnir snorted. Spoke quickly in Erling to the others, evidently repeating the question.

There was a burst of laughter. One of them, in an effusion of good humour, punched ibn Bakir on the shoulder.

The merchant, regaining his balance, rubbing at his numbed arm, realized that he'd asked a naive question.

Blood-eagle death, maybe," said Ofnir, flashing yellow teeth in a wide grin, making a complex two-handed gesture the southern merchant was abruptly pleased not to understand. "You see? her you see?"

Firaz ibn Bakir, a long way from home, shook his head.

+

He could blame his father, and curse him, even go to the women at the compound outside the walls and pay to have them evoke seithr. The volur might then send a night-spirit to possess his father, wherever he was. But there was something cowardly about that, and a warrior could not be a coward and still go to the gods when he died. Besides which, he had no money.

Riding in darkness before the first moon rose, Bern Thorkellson thought bitterly about the bonds of family. He could smell his own fear and laid a hand forward on the horse's neck to gentle it. It was too black to go quickly on this rough ground near the woods, and he could not—for obvious reasons—carry a torch.

He was entirely sober, which was useful. A man could die sober as well as drunken, he supposed, but had a better chance of avoiding some kinds of death. Of course it could also be said that no truly sober man would have done what he was doing now unless claimed by a spirit himself, ghost-ridden, god-tormented.

Bern didn't think he was crazed, but he'd have acknowledged freely that what he was doing—without having planned it at all—was not the wisest thing he'd ever done.

He concentrated on riding. There was no good reason for anyone to be abroad in these fields at night—farmers would be asleep behind doors, the shepherds would have their herds farther west—but there was always the chance of someone hoping to find a cup of ale at some hut, or meeting a girl, or looking for some-thing to steal.

He was stealing a dead man's horse, himself.

A warrior's vengeance would have had him kill Halldr Thinshank long ago and face the blood feud after, beside whatever distant kin, if any, might come to his aid. Instead, Halldr had died when the main crossbeam of the new house he was having built (with money that didn't belong to him) fell on his back, breaking it. And Bern had stolen the grey horse that was to be burned with the governor tomorrow.

It would delay the rites, he knew, disquiet the ghost of the man who had exiled Bern's father and taken his mother as a second wife. The man who had also, not incidentally, ordered Bern himself bound for three years as a servant to Arni Kjellson, recompense for his father's crime.

A young man named to servitude, with an exiled father, and so without any supporting family or name, could not readily proclaim himself a warrior among the Erlings unless he went so far from home that his history was unknown. His father had probably done that, raiding overseas again. Red-bearded, fierce-tempered, experienced. A perfect oarsman for some longship, if he didn't kill a benchmate in a fury, Bern thought sourly. He knew his father's capacity for rage. Arni Kjellson's brother Nikar was dead of it.

Halldr might fairly have exiled the murderer and given away half his land to stop a feud, but marrying the exile's wife and claiming land for himself smacked too much of reaping in pleasure what he'd sowed as a judge. Bern Thorkellson, an only son with two sisters married and off the island, had found himself changed—in a blur of time—from the heir of a celebrated raider-turned-farmer to a landless servant without kin to protect him. Could any man wonder if there was bitterness in him, and more than that? He'd loathed Rabady's governor with cold passion. A hatred shared by more than a few, if words whispered in ale were to be believed.

Of course no one else had ever done anything about Halldr. Bern was the one now riding Thinshank's favourite stallion amid stones and boulders in cold darkness on the night before the governor's pyre was to be lit on a ship by the rocky beach.

Not the wisest action of his life, agreed.

For one thing, he hadn't anything even vaguely resembling a plan. He'd been lying awake, listening to the snoring and snorting of the other two servants in the shed behind Kjellson's house. Not unusual, that wakefulness: bitterness could suck a man from sleep. But somehow he'd found himself on his feet this time, dressing, pulling on boots and the bearskin vest he'd been able to keep so far, though he'd had to fight for it. He'd gone outside, pissed against the shed wall, and then walked through the silent blackness of the town to Halldr's house (Frigga, his mother, lying somewhere inside, alone now, without a husband for the second time in a year).

He'd slipped around the side, eased open the door to the stable, listened to the boy there, snuffling in the dreams of a straw-covered sleep, and then led the big grey horse called Gyllir quietly out under the watching stars.

The stableboy never stirred. No one appeared in the lane. Only the named shapes of heroes and beasts in the gods' sky overhead. He'd been alone in Rabady with the night-spirits. It had felt like a dream.

The town gate was locked when danger threatened but not otherwise. Rabady was an island. Bern and the grey horse had walked right through the square by the harbour, past the shuttered booths, down the middle of the empty street, through the open gates, across the bridge over the ditch into the night fields.

As simple as that, as life-altering.

Life-ending was probably the better way to describe it, he decided, given that this was not, in fact, a dream. He had no access to a boat that could carry the horse, and come sunrise a goodly number of extremely angry men—appalled at his impiety and their own exposure to an unhoused ghost—would begin looking for the horse. When they found the son of exiled Thorkell also missing, the only challenging decision would be how to kill him.

This did raise a possibility, given that he was sober and capable of thought. He could change his mind and go back. Leave the horse out here to be found. A minor, disturbing incident. They might blame it on ghosts or wood spirits. Bern could be back in his shed, asleep behind Arni Kjellson's village house, before anyone was the wiser. Could even join the morning search for the horse, if fat Kjellson let him off wood-splitting to go.

They'd find the grey, bring it back, strangle and burn it on the drifting longship with Halldr Thinshank and whichever girl had won her spirit a place among warriors and gods by drawing the straw that freed her from the slow misery of her life.

Bern guided the horse across a stream. The grey was big, restive, but knew him. Kjellson had been properly grateful to the governor when half of Red Thorkell's farm and house were settled on him, and he had assigned his servants to labour for Thinshank at regular times. Bern was one of those servants now, by the same judgement that had given his family's lands to Kjellson. He had groomed the grey stallion often, walked him, cleaned out his straw. A magnificent horse, better than Halldr had ever deserved. There was nowhere to run this horse properly on Rabady; he was purely for display, an affirmation of wealth. Another reason, probably, why the thought of taking it away had come to him tonight in the dangerous space between dream and the waking world.

He rode on in the chill night. Winter was over, but it still had Its hard fingers in the earth. Their lives were defined by it here in the north. Bern was cold, even with the vest.

At least he knew where he was going now; that much seemed to have come to him. The land his father had bought with looted gold (mostly from the celebrated raid in Ferrieres twenty-five years ago) was on the other side of the village, south and west. He was aiming for the northern fringes of the trees.

He saw the shape of the marker boulder and guided the horse past it. They'd killed and buried a girl there to bless the fields, so long ago the inscription on the marker had faded away. It hadn't done much good. The land near the forest was too stony to be properly tilled. Ploughs broke up behind oxen or horses, metal rending, snapping off. Hard, ungiving soil. Sometimes the harvests were adequate, but most of the food that fed Rabady came from the mainland.

The boulder cast a shadow. He looked up, saw the blue moon had risen from beyond the woods. Spirits' moon. It occurred to him, rather too late, that the ghost of Halldr Thinshank could not be unaware of what was happening to his horse. Halldr's lingering soul would be set free only with the ship-burial and burning tomorrow. Tonight it could be abroad in the dark—which was where Bern was.

He made the hammer sign, invoking both Ingavin and Thünir. He shivered again. A stubborn man he was. Too clever for his own good? His father's son in that? He'd deny it, at a blade's end. This had nothing to do with Thorkell. He was pursuing his own feud with Halldr and the town, not his father's. You exiled a murderer (twice a murderer) if need be. You didn't condemn his freeborn son to years of servitude and a landless fate for the father's crime—and expect him to forgive. A man without land had nothing, could not marry, speak in the thringmoot, claim honour or pride. His life and name were marred, broken as a plough by stones.

He ought to have killed Halldr. Or Arni Kjellson. Or someone. He wondered, sometimes, where his own rage lay. He didn't seem to have that fury, like a berserkir in battle. Or like his father in drink.

His father had killed people, raiding with Siggur Volganson, and here at home.

Bern hadn't done anything so… direct. Instead, he'd stolen a horse secretly in the dark and was now heading, for want of anything close to a better idea, to see if woman's magic—the volur's—could offer him aid in the depths of a night. Not a brilliant plan, but the only one that had come to him. The women would probably scream, raise an alarm, turn him in.

That did make him think of something. A small measure of prudence. He turned east towards the risen moon and the edge of the wood, dismounted, and led the horse a short way in. He looped the rope to a tree trunk. He was not about to walk up to the women's compound leading an obviously stolen horse. This called for some trickery.

It was hard to be devious when you had no idea what you were doing.

He despised the bleak infliction of this life upon him. Was unable, it seemed, to even consider two more years of servitude, with no assurance of a return to any proper status afterwards. So, no, he wasn't going back, leaving the stallion to be found, slipping into his straw in the freezing shed behind Kjellson's house. That was over. The sagas told of moments when the hero's fate changed, when he came to the axle-tree. He wasn't a hero, but he wasn't going back. Not by choice.

He was likely to die tonight or tomorrow. No rites for him when that happened. There would be an excited quarrel over how to kill a defiling horse thief, how slowly, and who most deserved the pleasure of it. They would be drunk and happy. Bern thought of the blood-eagle then; pushed the image from his mind.

Even the heroes died. Usually young. The brave went to Ingavin's halls. He wasn't sure if he was brave.

It was dense and black in the trees. He felt the pine needles underfoot. Wood smells: moss, pine, scent of a fox. Bern listened; heard nothing but his own breathing, and the horse's. Gyllir seemed calm enough. He left him there, turned north again, still in the woods, towards where he thought the volur's compound was. He'd seen it a few times, a clearing carved out a little way into the forest. If someone had magic, Bern thought, they could deal with wolves. Or even make use of them. It was said that the women who lived here had tamed some of the beasts, could speak their language. Bern didn't believe that. He made the hammer sign again, however, with the thought.

He'd have missed the branching path in the blackness if it hadn't been for the distant spill of lantern light. It was late for that, the bottom of a night, but he had no idea what laws or rules women such as these would observe. Perhaps the seer—the volur—stayed awake all night, sleeping by day like the owls. The sense of being in a dream returned. He wasn't going to go back, and he didn't want to die.

Those two things together could bring you out alone in night approaching a seer's cabin through black trees. The lights—there were two of them—grew brighter as he came nearer. He could see the path, and then the clearing, and the structures beyond a fence: one large cabin, smaller ones flanking it, evergreens in a circle around, as if held at bay.

An owl cried behind him. A moment later Bern realized that it wasn't an owl. No going back now, even if his feet would carry him. He'd been seen, or heard.

The compound gate was closed and locked. He climbed over the fence. Saw a brewhouse and a locked storeroom with a heavy door. Walked past them into the glow cast by the lamplight in the windows of the largest cabin. The other buildings were dark. He stopped and cleared his throat. It was very quiet.

"Ingavin's peace upon all dwelling here."

He hadn't said a word since rising from his bed. His voice sounded jarring and abrupt. No response from within, no one to be seen.

"I come without weapons, seeking guidance."

The lanterns flickered as before in the windows on either side of the cabin door. He saw smoke rising from the chimney. There was a small garden on the far side of the building, mostly bare this early in the year, with the snow just gone.

He heard a noise behind him, wheeled.

"It is deep in the bowl of night," said the woman, who unlocked and closed the outer gate behind her, entering the yard. She was hooded; in the darkness it was impossible to see her face. Her voice was low. "Our visitors come by daylight… bearing gifts."

Bern looked down at his empty hands. Of course. Seithr had a price. Everything in the world did, it seemed. He shrugged, tried to appear indifferent. After a moment, he took off his vest. Held it out. The woman stood motionless, then came forward and took it, wordlessly. He saw that she limped, favouring her right leg. When she came near, he realized that she was young, no older than he was.

She walked to the door of the cabin, knocked. It opened, just a little. Bern couldn't see who stood within. The young woman entered; the door closed. He was alone again, in a clearing under stars and the one moon. It was colder now without the vest.

His older sister had made it for him. Siv was in Vinmark, on he mainland, married, two children, maybe another by now… they'd had no reply after sending word of Thorkell's exile a year ago. He hoped her husband was kind, had not changed with the news of her father's banishment. He might have: shame could come from a wife's kin, bad blood for his own sons, a check to his ambitions. That could alter a man.

There would be more shame when tidings of his own deeds crossed the water. Both his sisters might pay for what he'd done tonight. He hadn't thought about that. He hadn't thought very much at all. He'd only gotten up from bed and taken a horse before the ghost moon rose, as in a dream.

The cabin door opened.

The woman with the limp came out, standing in the spill of light. She motioned to him and so he walked forward. He felt afraid, didn't want to show it. He came up to her and saw her make a slight gesture and realized she hadn't seen him clearly before, in the darkness. She still had her hood up, hiding her face; he registered yellow hair, quick eyes. She opened her mouth as if to say something but didn't speak. Just motioned for him to enter. Bern went within and she pulled the door shut behind him, from outside. He didn't know where she was going. He didn't know what she'd been doing outside, so late.

He really didn't know much at all. Why else come to ask of women's magic what a man ought to do for himself?

Taking a deep breath he looked around by firelight, and the lamps at both windows, and over against the far wall on a long table. It was warmer than he'd expected. He saw his vest lying on a second table in the middle of the room, among a clutter of objects: conjuring bones, a stone dagger, a small hammer, a carving of Thünir, a tree branch, twigs, soapstone pots of various sizes. There were herbs strewn everywhere, lying on the table, others in pots and bags on the other long surface against the wall. There was a chair on top of that table at the back, and two blocks of wood in front of it, for steps. He had no idea what that meant. He saw a skull on the nearer table. Kept his face impassive.

"Why take a dead man's horse, Bern Thorkellson?"

Bern jumped, no chance of concealing it. His heart hammered. The voice came from the most shadowed corner of the room, near the back, to his right. Smoke drifted from a candle, recently extinguished. A bed there, a woman sitting upon it. They said she drank blood, the volur, that her spirit could leave her body and converse with spirits. That her curse killed. That she was past a hundred years old and knew where the Volgan's sword was.

"How… how do you know what I…?" he stammered. Foolish question. She even knew his name.

She laughed at him. A cold laughter. He could have been in his straw right now, Bern thought, a little desperately. Sleeping. Not here.

"What power could I claim, Bern Thorkellson, if I didn't know that much of someone come in the night?"

He swallowed.

She said, "You hated him so much? Thinshank?"

Bern nodded. What point denying?

"I had cause," he said.

"Indeed," said the seer. "Many had cause. He married your mother, did he not?"

"That isn't why," Bern said.

She laughed again. "No? Do you hate your father also?" He swallowed again. He felt himself beginning to sweat. "A clever man, Thorkell Einarson."

Bern snorted bitterly, couldn't help it. "Oh, very. Exiled himself, ruined his family, lost his land."

"A temper when he drank. But a shrewd man, as I recall. Is his son?"

He still couldn't see her clearly, a shadow on a bed. Had she been asleep? They said she didn't sleep.

"You will be killed for this," she said. Her voice held a dry amusement more than anything else. "They will fear an angry ghost."

"I know that," said Bern. "It is why I have come. I need… counsel." He paused. "Is it clever to know that much, at least?"

"Take the horse back," she said, blunt as a hammer.

He shook his head. "I wouldn't need magic to do that. I need counsel for how to live. And not go back."

He saw her shift on the bed then. She stood up. Came forward. The light fell upon her, finally. She wasn't a hundred years old.

She was very tall, thin and bony, his mother's age, perhaps more. Her hair was long and plaited and fell on either side of her head like a maiden's, but grey. Her eyes were a bright, icy blue, her face lined, long, no beauty in it, a hard authority. Cruelty. A raider's face, had she been a man. She wore a heavy robe, dyed the colour of old blood. An expensive colour. He looked at her and was afraid. Her fingers were very long.

"You think a bearskin vest, badly made, buys you access to seithr?" she said. Her name was Iord, he suddenly remembered. Forgot who had told him that, long ago. In daylight.

Bern cleared his throat. "It isn't badly made," he protested. She didn't bother responding, stood waiting.

He said, "I have no other gifts to give. I am a servant to Arni Kjellson now." He looked at her, standing as straight as he could. "You said… many had reason to hate Halldr. Was he… generous to you and the women here?"

A guess, a gamble, a throw of dice on a tavern table among beakers of ale. He hadn't known he would say that. Had no idea whence the question had come.

She laughed again. A different tone this time. Then she was silent, looking at him with those hard eyes. Bern waited, his heart still pounding.

She came abruptly forward, moved past him to the table in the middle of the room, long-striding for a woman. He caught a scent about her as she went: pine resin, something else, an animal smell. She picked up some of the herbs, threw them in a bowl, took that and crossed to the back table for something beside the raised chair, put that in the bowl, too. He couldn't see what. With the hammer she began pounding and grinding, her back to him.

Still working, her movements decisive, she said suddenly, "You had no thought of what you might do, son of Thorkell, son of Frigga? You just stole a horse. On an island. Is that it?"

Stung, Bern said, "Shouldn't your magic tell you my thoughts—or lack of them?"

She laughed again. Glanced at him briefly then, over her shoulder. The eyes were bright. "If I could read a mind and future just from a man entering my room, I'd not be by the woods on Rabady Isle in a cabin with a leaking roof. I'd be at Kjarten Vidurson's hall in Hlegest, or in Ferrieres, or even with the Emperor in Sarantium."

"Jaddites? They'd burn you for pagan magic."

She was still amused, still crushing herbs in the stone bowl. "Not if I told their future truly," she said. "Sun god or no, kings want to know what will be. Even Aeldred would welcome me, could I look at any man and know all of him."

"Aeldred? No he wouldn't."

She glanced back at him again. "You are wrong. His hunger is for knowledge, as much as for anything. Your father may even know that by now, if he's gone raiding among the Anglcyn."

"Has he? Gone raiding there?" He asked before he could stop himself.

He heard her laughing; she didn't even look back at him this time.

She came again to the near table and took a flask of some-thing. Poured a thick, pasty liquid into the bowl, stirred it, then poured it all back into the flask. Bern felt afraid still, watching her. This was magic. He was entangling himself with it. Witchery. Seithr. Dark as the night was, as the way of women in the dark.

His own choice, though. He had come for this. And it seemed she was doing something.

There was a movement, from over by the fire. He looked quickly. Took an involuntary step backwards, an oath escaping him. Something slithered across the floor and beneath the far table. It disappeared behind a chest against that wall.

The seer followed his gaze, smiled. "Ah. You see my new friend? They brought me a serpent today, the ship from the south. They said his poison was gone. I had him bite one of the girls, to be sure. I need a serpent. They change worlds when they change skin, did you know that?"

He hadn't known that. Of course he hadn't known that. He kept his gaze on the wooden chest. Nothing moved, but it was there, coiled, behind. He felt much too warm now, smelled his own sweat.

He finally looked back at her. Her eyes were waiting, held his. "Drink," she said.

No one had made him come here. He took the flask from her hand. She had rings on three fingers. He drank. The herbs were thick in the drink, hard to swallow.

"Half only," she said quickly. He stopped. She took the flask and drained it herself. Put it down on the table. Said something in a low voice he couldn't hear. Turned back to him.

"Undress," she said. He stared at her. "A vest will not buy your future or the spirit world's guidance, but a young man always has another offering to give."

He didn't understand at first, and then he did.

A glitter in her coldness. She had to be older than his mother, lined and seamed, her breasts sunken on her chest beneath the dark red robe. Bern closed his eyes.

"I must have your seed, Bern Thorkellson, if you wish seithr's power. You require more than a seer's vision, and before daybreak, or they will find you and cut you apart before they allow you to die." Her gaze was pitiless. "You know it to be so."

He knew it. His mouth was dry. He looked at her.

"You hated him too?"

"Undress," she said again.

He pulled his tunic over his head.

It ought to have been a dream, all of this. It wasn't. He removed his boots, leaning against the table. She watched, her eyes never leaving him, very bright, very blue. His hand on the table touched the skull. It wasn't human, he saw, belatedly. A wolf, most likely. He wasn't reassured.

She wasn't here to reassure. He was inside another world, or in the doorway to it: women's world, gateway to women's knowing. Shadows and blood. A serpent in the room. On the ship from the south… they had traded during the banned time, before the funeral rites. He didn't think, somehow, they would be troubled by that here. They said his poison was gone. He felt whatever he had just drunk in his veins now.

"Go on," said the seer. A woman ought not to watch like this, Bern thought, tasting his fear again. He hesitated, then took off his trousers, was naked before her. He squared his shoulders. He saw her smile, the thin mouth. He felt light-headed. What had she given him to drink? She gestured; his feet carried him across the room to her bed.

"Lie down," she said, watching him. "On your back."

He did what she told him. He had left the world where things were as they… ought to be. He had left it when he took the dead man's horse. She walked about the room and pinched shut or blew out the candles and lamps, so only the firelight glowed, red on the farthest wall. In the near-dark it was easier. She came back, stood over against her bed where he lay—an outline against the fire, looking down upon him. She reached out, slowly—he saw her hand moving—and touched his manhood.

Bern closed his eyes again. He'd thought her touch would be cold, like age, like death, but it wasn't. She moved her fingers, down and back up, and then slowly down again. He felt himself, even amid fear and a kind of horror, becoming aroused. A roaring in his blood. The drink? This wasn't like a romp with Elli or Anrida in the stubbled fields after harvesting, in the straw of their barn by moonlight.

This wasn't like anything.

"Good," whispered the volur, and repeated it, her hand moving. "It needs your seed to be done, you see. You have a gift for me."

Her voice had changed again, deepened. She withdrew her hand. Bern trembled, kept his eyes tightly closed, heard a rustling as she shed her own robe. He wondered suddenly where the serpent was; pushed that thought away. The bed shifted, he felt her hands on his shoulders, a knee by one hip, and then the other, smelled her scent—and then she mounted him from above without hesitation and sheathed him within her, hard.

Bern gasped, heard a sound torn from her. And with that, he understood—without warning or expectation—that he had a power here, after all. Even in this place of magic. She needed what was his to give. And it was that awareness, a kind of surging, that took him over, more than any other shape desire might wear, as the woman—the witch, volur, wise woman, seer, whatever she would be named—began rocking upon him, breathing harder. Crying a name then (not his), her hips moving as in a spasm. He made himself open his eyes, saw her head thrown back, her mouth wide open, her own eyes closed now upon need as she rode him wildly like a night horse of her own dark dreaming and claimed for herself—now, with his own harsh, torn spasm—the seed she said she needed to work magic in the night.

"Get dressed."

She swung off his body and up from the bed. No lingering, no aftermath. The voice brittle and cold again. She put on her robe and went to the near wall of the cabin, rapped three times on it, hard. She looked back at him, her glance bleak as before, as if the woman upon him moments ago, with her closed eyes and shuddering breath, had never existed in the world. "Unless you'd prefer the others see you like this when they come in?"

Bern moved. As he hurried into clothing and boots, she crossed to the fire, took a taper, and began lighting the lamps again. Before they were all lit, before he had his overshirt on, the outside door opened and four women came in, moving quickly. He had a sense they'd been trying to catch him before he was dressed. Which meant they had…

He took a breath. He didn't know what it meant. He was lost here, in this cabin, in the night.

One of the women carried a dark blue cloak, he saw. She took this to the volur and draped it about her, fastening it at one shoulder with a silver torque. Three of the others, none of them young, took over dealing with the lamps. The last one began preparing another mixture at the table, using a different bowl. No one said a word. Bern didn't see the young girl who'd spoken to him outside.

After their entrance and quick glances at him, none of the women even seemed to acknowledge his presence here. A man, meaningless. He hadn't been, just before, though, had he? A part of him wanted to say that. Bern slipped his head and arms into his shirt and stood near the rumpled bed. He felt oddly awake now, alert—something in the drink she'd given him?

The one making the new mixture poured it into a beaker and carried it to the seer, who drained it at once, making a face. She went over to the blocks of wood before the back table. A woman on each side helped her step up and then seat herself on the elevated chair. There were lights burning now, all through the room. The volur nodded.

The four women began to chant in a tongue Bern didn't know. One of the lamps by the bed suddenly went out. Bern felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. This was seithr, magic, not just foretelling. The seer closed her eyes and gripped the arms of her heavy chair, as if afraid she might be carried off. One of the other women, still chanting, moved with a taper past Bern and relit the extinguished lamp. Returning, she paused by him for a moment. She squeezed his buttocks with one hand, saying nothing, not even looking at him. Then she rejoined the others in front of the elevated chair. Her gesture, casual and controlling, was exactly like a warrior's with a serving girl passing his bench in a tavern.

Bern's face reddened. He clenched his fists. But just then the seer spoke from her seat above them, her eyes still closed, hands clutching the chair arms, her voice high—greatly altered—but saying words he could understand.

They'd given him back his vest which was a blessing. The night felt even colder after the warmth inside. He walked slowly, eyes not yet adjusted to blackness, moving away from the compound lights through the trees on either side. He was concentrating: on finding his way, and on remembering exactly what the volur had told him. The instructions had been precise. Magic involved precision, it seemed. A narrow path to walk, ruin on either side, a single misstep away. He still felt the effects of the drink, a sharpening of perception. A part of him was aware that what he was doing now could be seen as mad, but it didn't feel that way. He felt… protected.

He heard the horse before he saw it. Wolves might eat the moons, heralding the end of days and the death of gods, but they hadn't found Halldr's grey horse yet. Bern spoke softly, that the animal might know his voice as he approached. He rubbed Gyllir's mane, untied the rope from the tree, led him back out into the field. The blue moon was high now, waning, the night past its deepest point, turning towards dawn. He would have to move quickly.

What did she tell you to do?"

Bern wheeled. Sharpened perceptions or not, he hadn't heard anyone approach. If he'd had a sword he'd have drawn it, but he didn't even have a dagger. It was a woman's voice, though, and he recognized it.

"What are you doing here?"

"Saving your life," she said. "Perhaps. It may not be possible." She limped forward from the trees. He hadn't heard her approach because she'd been waiting for him, he realized. "What do you mean?"

"Answer my question. What did she tell you to do?"

Bern hesitated. Gyllir snorted, swung his head, restive now.

"Do this, tell me that, stand here, go there," Bern said. "Why do all of you enjoy giving orders so much?"

"I can leave," the young woman said mildly. Though she was still hooded, he saw her shrug. "And I certainly haven't ordered you to undress and get into bed for me."

Bern went crimson. He was desperately glad of the darkness, suddenly. She waited. It was true, he thought, she could walk away and he'd be… exactly where he'd been a moment ago. He had no idea what she was doing here, but that ignorance was of a piece with everything else tonight. He could almost have found it amusing, if it hadn't been so thickly trammelled in… woman things.

"She made a spell," he said, finally, "up on that chair, in the blue cloak. For magic."

"I know about the chair and cloak," the girl said impatiently. "Where is she sending you?"

"Back to town. She's made me invisible to them. I can ride right down the street and no one will see me." He heard the note of triumph enter his voice. Well, why not? It was astonishing. "I'm to go onto the southerners' ship—there's a ramp out, by law, it is open for inspection—and go straight down into the hold."

"With a horse?"

He nodded. "They have animals. There's a ramp down, too." "And then?"

"Stay there till they leave, and get off at their next port of call. Ferrieres, probably."

He could see she was staring straight at him. "Invisible? With a horse? On a ship?"

He nodded again.

She began to laugh. Bern felt himself flushing again. "You find this amusing? Your own volur's power? Women's magic?"

She was trying to collect herself, a hand to her mouth. "Tell me," she asked, finally, "if you can't be seen, how am I looking at you?"

Bern's heart knocked hard against his ribs. He rubbed a hand across his forehead. Found that he couldn't speak for a moment.

"You, ah, are one of them. Part of, ah, the seithr?"

She took a step towards him. He saw her shake her head within the hooded robe. She wasn't laughing now. "Bern Thorkellson, I see you because you aren't under any spell. You will be taken as soon as you enter the town. Captured like a child. She lied to you."

He took a deep breath. Looked up at the sky. Ghost moon, early spring stars. His hands were trembling, holding the horse's reins.

"Why would… she said she hated Halldr as much as I did!"

"That's true. He was no friend to us. Thinshank's dead, though. She can use the goodwill of whoever becomes governor now. Her capturing you—and they will be told before midday that she put you under a spell and forced you to ride back to them—is a way to achieve that, isn't it?"

He didn't feel guarded any more.

"We need food and labour out here," she went on calmly. "We need the fear and assistance of the town, both. All volurs require this, wherever they are. You become her way of starting again after the long quarrel with Halldr. Your coming here tonight was a gift to her."

He thought of the woman above him in the bed, lit only by the fire.

"In more ways than one," the girl added, as if reading his thoughts.

"She has no power, no seithr?"

"I didn't say that. Although I don't think she does." "There's no magic? Nothing to make a man invisible?"

She laughed again. "If one spearman can't hit a target when he throws, do you decide that spears are useless?" It was too dark to make out any expression on her face. He realized something.

"You hate her," he said. "That's why you are here. Because… because she had the snake bite you!"

He could see she was surprised, hesitating for the first time. "I don't love her, no," she agreed. "But I wouldn't be here because of that."

"Why then?" Bern asked, a little desperately.

Again a pause. He wished, now, that there were light. He still hadn't seen her face.

She said, "We are kin, Bern Thorkellson. I'm here because of that."

"What?" He was stunned.

"Your sister married my brother, on the mainland." "Siv married…?"

"No, Athira wedded my brother Gevin."

He felt abruptly angry, couldn't have said why. "That doesn't make us kin, woman."

Even in darkness he could see that he had wounded her.

The horse moved again, whickered, impatient with standing. The woman said, "I am a long way from home. Your family is the closest I have on this island, I suppose. Forgive me for presuming."

His family was landless, his father exiled. He was a servant, compelled to sleep in a barn on straw for two more years.

"What presumption?" Bern said roughly. "That isn't what I meant." He wasn't sure what he'd meant.

There was a silence. He was thinking hard. "You were sent to the volur? They reported you had a gift?"

The hood moved up and down. "Curious, how often unwed youngest daughters have a gift, isn't it?"

"Why did I never hear of you?"

"We are meant to be unattached, to be the more dependent. That's why they bring girls from distant villages and farms. All the seers do that. I've spoken to your mother, though."

"You have? What? Why…?"

The shrug again. "Frigga's a woman. Athira gave me a message for her."

"You all have your tricks, don't you?" He felt bitter, suddenly.

"Swords and axes are so much better, aren't they?" she said sharply. She was staring at him again, though he knew the darkness hid his face, too. "We're all trying to make ourselves a life, Bern Thorkellson. Men and women both. Why else are you out here now?"

Bitterness still. "Because my father is a fool who killed a man." "And his son is what?"

"A fool about to die before the next moon rises. A good way to… make a life, isn't it? Useful kin for you to have."

She said nothing, looked away. He heard the horse again. Felt the wind, a change in it, as though the night had indeed turned, moving now towards dawn.

"The snake," he said awkwardly. "Is it…?"

"I'm not poisoned. It hurts."

"You… walked out here a long way."

"There's one of us out all night on watch. We take turns, the younger ones. People come in the dark. That's how I saw you on the horse and told her."

"No, I meant… just now. To warn me."

"Oh." She paused. "You believe me, then?"

For the first time, a note of doubt, wistfulness. She was betraying the volur for him.

He grinned crookedly. "You are looking right at me, as you said. I can't be that hard to see. Even a piss-drunk raider falling off his horse will spot me when the sun comes up. Yes, I believe you."

She let out a breath.

"What will they do to you?" he asked. It had just occurred to him.

"If they find out I was here? I don't want to think about it." She paused. "Thank you for asking."

He felt suddenly shamed. Cleared his throat. "If I don't ride back into the village, will they know you… warned me?"

Her laughter again, unexpected, bright and quick. "They could possibly decide you were clever, by yourself."

He laughed too. Couldn't help it. Was aware that it could be seen as a madness sent by the gods, laughter at the edge of dying one hideous death or another. Not like the mindlessness of the water-disease-a man bitten by a sick fox—but the madness where one has lost hold of the way things are. Laughter here, another kind of strangeness in this dark by the wood among the spirits of the dead, with the blue moon overhead, pursued by a wolf in the sky.

The world would end when that wolf caught the two moons. He had more immediate problems, actually.

"What will you do?" she asked. The third time she'd seemed to track his thoughts. Perhaps it was more than being a youngest daughter, this matter of having a gift. He wished, again, he could see her clearly.

But, as it happened, he did know, finally, the answer to her question.

Once, years ago, his father had been in a genial mood one evening as they'd walked out together to repair a loose door on their barn. Thorkell wasn't always drunk, or even often so (being honest with his own memories). That summer evening he was sober and easy, and the measure of that mood was that, after finishing the work, the two of them went walking, towards the northern boundary of their land, and Thorkell spoke of his raiding days to his only son, something that rarely happened.

Thorkell Einarson had not been a man given to boasting, or to offering scraps of advice from the table of his recollections. This made him unusual among the Erlings, or those that Bern knew, at any rate. It wasn't always easy having an unusual father, though a boy could take some dark pride in seeing Thorkell feared by others as much as he was. They whispered about him, pointed him out, carefully, to merchants visiting the isle. Bern, a watchful child, had seen it happen.

Other men had told the boy tales; he knew something of what his father had done. Companion and friend to Siggur Volganson himself right to the end. Voyages in storm, raids in the dark. Escaping the Cyngael after Siggur died and his sword was lost. A journey alone across the Cyngael lands, then the width of the Anglcyn kingdom to the eastern coast, and finally home across the sea to Vinmark and this isle.

"I recollect a night like this, a long time ago," his father said, leaning back against the boulder that marked the boundary of their land. "We went too far from the boats and they cut us off—Cuthbert's'household guard, his best men—between a wood and a stream."

Cuthbert had been king of the Anglcyn in the years when Thorkell was raiding with the Volgan. Bern knew that much.

He remembered loving moments such as that one had been, the two of them together, the sun setting, the air mild, his father mild, and talking to him.

"Siggur said something to us that night. He said there are times when all you can do to survive is one single thing, however unlikely it may be, and so you act as if it can be done. The only chance we had was that the enemy was too sure of victory, and had not posted outliers against a night breakout."

Thorkell looked at his son. "You understand that everyone posts outlying guards? It is the most basic thing an army does. It is mad not to. They had to have them, there was no chance they didn't."

Bern nodded.

"So we spoke our prayers to Ingavin and broke out," Thorkell said, matter-of-factly. "Maybe sixty men—two boats' worth of us—against two hundred, at the least. A blind rush in the dark, some of us on stolen horses, some running, no order to it, only speed. The whole thing being to get to their camp, and through it—take some horses on the run if we could—cut back towards the ships two days away."

Thorkell paused then, looking out over summer farmlands, towards the woods. "They didn't have outliers. They were waiting for morning to smash us, were mostly asleep, a few still singing and drinking. We killed thirty or forty of them, got horses for some of our unmounted, took two thegns hostage, by blind luck—couldn't tell who they were in the dark. And we sold them back to Cuthbert the next day for our freedom to get to the boats and sail away."

He'd actually grinned, Bern remembered, behind the red beard. His father had rarely smiled.

"The Anglcyn in the west rebelled against King Cuthbert after that, which is when Athelbert became king, then Gademar, and Aeldred. Raiding got harder, and then Siggur died in Llywerth. That's when I decided to become a landowner. Spend my days fixing broken doors."

He'd had to escape first, alone and on foot, across the breadth of two different countries.

You act as if it can be done.

"I'm crossing to the mainland," Bern said quietly to the girl in that darkness by the wood.

She stood very still. "Steal a boat?"

He shook his head. "Couldn't take the horse on any boat I could manage alone."

"You won't leave the horse?"

"I won't leave the horse."

"Then?"

"Swim," said Bern. "Clearly." He smiled, but she couldn't see it, he knew.

She was silent a moment. "You can swim?"

He shook his head. "Not that far."

Heroes came to thresholds, to moments that marked them, and they died young, too. Icy water, end of winter, the stony shore of Vinmark a world away across the strait, just visible by daylight qui f the mist didn't settle, but not now.

What was a hero, if he never had a chance to do anything? If he died at the first threshold?

"I think the horse can carry me," he said. "I will… act as if it can." He felt his mood changing, a strangeness overtaking him even as he spoke. "Promise me no monsters in the sea?"

"I wish I could," said the girl.

"Well, that's honest," he said. He laughed again. She didn't, this time.

"It will be very cold."

"Of course it will." He hesitated. "Can you… see anything?" She knew what he meant. "No."

"Am I underwater?" He tried to make it a joke.

Shook her head. "I can't tell. I'm sorry. I'm… more a youngest daughter than a seer."

Another silence. It struck him that it would be appropriate to begin feeling afraid. The sea at night, straight out into the black…

"Shall I… any word for your mother?"

It hadn't occurred to him. Nothing had, really. He thought about it now. "Better you never saw me. That I was clever by myself. And died of it, in the sea."

"You may not."

She didn't sound as if she believed that. She would have been rowed across from Vinmark, coming here. She knew the strait, the currents and the cold, even if there were no monsters.

Bern shrugged. "That will be as Ingavin and Thünir decide. Make some magic, if you have any. Pray for me, if you haven't. Perhaps we'll meet again. I thank you for coming out. You saved me from… one bad kind of death, at least."

It was past the bottom of the night, and he had a distance to go to the beach nearest the mainland. He said nothing more, and neither did she, though he could see that she was still staring at him in the dark. He mounted up on the horse he wouldn't leave for Halldr Thinshank's funeral rites, and rode away.

Some time before reaching the strand south-east of the forest, he realized he didn't know her name, or have any clear idea what she looked like. Unlikely to matter; if they met again it would probably be in the afterworld of souls.

He came around the looming dark of the pine woods to a stony place by the water: rocky and wild, exposed, no boats here, no fishermen in the night. The pounding of the sea, heavy sound of it, salt in his face, no shelter from the wind. The blue moon west, behind him now, the white one not rising tonight until dawn. It would be dark on the ocean water. Ingavin alone knew what creatures might be waiting to pull him down. He wouldn't leave the horse. He wouldn't go back. You did whatever was left, and acted as if it could be done. Bern cursed his father aloud, then, for murdering another man, doing that to all of them, his sisters and his mother and himself, and then he urged the grey horse into the surf, which was white where it hit the stones, and black beyond, under the stars.