The Merman's Children

I

A few leagues inland from the Adriatic coast, hills began swelling into mountains. That rise, the edge of the Svilaja Planina, was also the border of the district, reaching further on into the true highlands, for whose peace the zhupan Ivan Subitj was responsible. Yet his castle did not stand near the middle of it, but at Skradin, not far at all from Shibenik. Partly this was because the village was the largest community in the zhupe, partly so that if need be he could summon quick help from the town. Besides, I little warding was generally required; much of the country was wilderness, and the dwellers peaceable. Indeed, this was a wholly different world from the littoral, its ships and cities and outlook to the West. Here ancient ways endured, and ancient things.

Father Tomislav seemed to embody them as he passed through Skradin. He stumped along faster than would have been awaited in a man so burly. His oaken staff would be a fearsome weapon were he ever attacked. The cassock he had tucked up above dusty I’” old boots was of the coarsest linsey-woolsey, faded and darned, The rosary that swung at his side, making the crucifix bounce, was of wooden beads carved by a peasant. His face was likewise of the peasantry, broad, round-nosed, weather-beaten, small russet eyes a-twinkle over the high cheekbones, scant gray hair but a grizzled bush of beard spilling over the chest almost to the paunch, I His hands were big and calloused.

As he passed down the street, he received many hails from people. He replied boomingly, save when a child would skip near enough for him to rumple its locks. A few persons called-had he learned something about the aliens, were they dangerous, what did they portend? “You’ll hear in time, in God’s good time,” he told them, without pause in his stride. “Meanwhile, have no fear We’ve sturdy saints looking after us,” At the castle, a sentry notified him, “The zhupan said he will meet you in the Falcon Chamber.” Tomislav nodded and bustled on across the cobbles of the courtyard, into the keep. This was a minor fortress built of tawny limestone quarried nearby more than a hundred years ago; it lacked glass, proper chimneys, any modem comfort. At the north end it sported a watchtower, below whose roof was a room whence men could look widely over the landscape and sometimes loose their hawks. There, too, they could talk in private.

Having climbed, Tomislav leaned out for the view while he puffed. Below him was the daily tumult, servants, artisans, dogs, poultry, sound of voices and footfalls and clattering metal, whiffs of smoke and dung and bread in the oven. Beyond were grainfields mellowing toward harvest, a-ripple under a breeze that sent a few clouds white across blue overhead. Birds filled the sky, doves, crows, thrushes, rooks, larks. On the southern horizon, wildwood made a green wall to cut off all but a glimpse of the lake.

His gaze sought back along the Krka that, passing by Skradin, emptied into yonder water. A mile outside the village, some apple trees grew by the stream, fenced off lest pigs take fallen fruit or boys take unfallen. Tornislav saw the helm and lancehead of a horseman flash beside the rails. More guards surrounded the entire orchard. Under its leaves, the strangers sat captive.

Steps on the staircase caused the priest to turn around. The zhupan entered—a tall man, craggy-featured, the scar of a swordslash twisting his mouth and seaming his cheek on the left. He wore his white-shot black hair at shoulder length but trimmed his beard close. His garb was as usual, an embroidered blouse, breeks tucked into half-boots, a dagger at his belt, no jewelry.

“God give you a good day,” Tomislav greeted with a sign of blessing. He would have said the same to the humblest old granny.

“That may depend on you as well,” Ivan Subitj replied wryly.

Tomislav could not quite halt a scowl when the castle chaplain, Father Petar, came in behind. This was a gaunt fellow who seldom smiled. The priests exchanged stiff nods.

“Well, have you a useful word for us?” Ivan demanded.

Tomislav grew more hesitant than was his wont. “I mayor I may not. My wits don’t reach to understanding this thing at once.”

“Scarcely a surprise,” Petar snapped. “My son, I warned you it was a waste of time sending for. . . for one whose pastorate huddles afar in the woods. No offense, Tomislav. I hope you will agree this is a matter for learned doctors to study, for the Ban or perhaps the King’s own regents to decide about.”

“We’d not hear from them soon,” Ivan said. “Meanwhile, we’ve more than a hundred eldritch incomers to guard and feed. It strains us, keeping them, not to speak of the unease their presence wakens in the commoners.”

“What have you learned from Shibenik?” Tomislav inquired.

Ivan shrugged. “What I told you, however briefly, when you arrived yesterday. A foundering wreck of a foreign ship; dead bodies of this race, and of what appear to be Italians—likeliest Venetians-that must have fought them; that’s what the satnik’s men collected. Wisely, he’s taken steps to keep news from spreading. The corpses were buried in secret, the soldiers got strict orders to say nothing to anybody. Rumors are bound to spread regardless, but we can hope they’ll stay mere rumors and die out after a while.”

“Save here,” Petar muttered, and ran fingers through his blond beard. His other hand sent clicks along his rosary.

“Yes. Well, not much traffic goes in or out of Skradin,” Ivan said. “I’ve sent a request for help-food and reinforcements—but had no answer yet. Doubtless the satnik has a letter on its way to Ban Pavle, asking for instructions, and is wary of acting till he hears. This leaves me holding the entire burden, wherefore I seek what counsel I can get.”

“From anybody whatsoever?” Petar scoffed.

Tomislav bristled, gripped hard his staff, and growled back, “What would your advice be?”

“Safest to slay them” Petar said. “They mayor may not be human, but Christian they surely are not-not Catholics of the Western rite, mauger that one of them knows Latin, nor of ours; not Orthodox schismatics, not even of the abominable Bogomil heresy, not even Jews or paynim.” His voice grew high; between the chill stone walls, he sweated. “Naked, shameless, seen freely copulating. . . why, the very heathen have some decency, some kind of marriage. . . . And nothing like a prayer, a sacrifice, any act of worship, nothing like that has been observed among them in their plight.”

“If this be true,” Tomislav said, turning mild, “why, the worst of sins would be to slaughter them, when we might instead lead them to God.”

“We cannot,” Petar insisted. “They are beasts, they have no souls, or they are something worse, something out of Hell itself.”

“That remains to be seen,” Ivan interrupted.

Petar clutched at the zhupan’s wrist. “Lord-my son-my son, dare we risk damnation such as they could bring? The Holy Glagolitic Church is beleaguered already-by the Pope, who should be our loving father, by the Orthodox of Serbia and the Empire, by the Satan-inspired Bogomils—”

“Enough!” Ivan freed himself. “I bade Father Tomislav come here and meet those beings for sound reasons. Must I repeat them to you? I know him of old as a man wise in his fashion; he’s no ignoramus either, he studied in Zadar and later served its bishop; as for devilment or witchcraft, he lives where folk know more about that than we do. He himself has been touched—”

There appeared that on Tomislav’s face which caused the warrior to break off his speech and finish lamely; “Have you, then, discovered aught?”

The rustic priest stood a moment, fighting down his feelings, before he replied. Then it was with a trudging calmness. “I may have. Petar addressed their leader wrongly when he showed he commands a bit of Latin. That person is proud, he’s suffering from his wounds, he’s sick with fear on his people’s behalf. Shout at him like at a slave, rail at him about their ways, which have harmed no one unless maybe themselves. . . how do you expect he’ll behave? Naturally he turned his back. You did better for us, Zhupan, when you sent in your military chirurgeon to treat their hurts.”

“Well, then, you spoke softly to the chief,” Ivan said. “What has he told you?”

“Little as yet. However, I feel sure that’s not out of unwillingness. His Latin is scant and bears a grievous accent.” Tomislav chuckled. “I confess my own has gathered rust, which didn’t help matters. Moreover, we’re entirely foreign to each other. How much can we explain in a few hours?

“He did convey to me that they came hither not as enemies but only in search of a home-beneath the sea.” That occasioned less surprise than it might have, for the looks of the merfolk had immediately raised speculation. “They were driven out of their country in the far North; I’ve not learned how or why. He admits they’re not Christian, though what,they are is still a mystery to me. He promised that if we let them go, they’ll seek the water and never return.”

“Lies are cheap,” said Petar.

“Do you think he was truthful?” Ivan queried.

Tomislav nodded. “I do. Of course, I can’t take my oath on It.”

“Have you any notion about their nature?”

Tomislav frowned out at the sky. “Um-m-m. . . a guess or two, maybe. Just guesswork, founded on certain things they know or believe in my flock, on what I’ve read or heard elsewhere, and on my own. . . my own experience. Most likely I’m wrong.”

“Are they of the mortal world?”

“They can be slain, the same as us.”

“That is not what I asked, Tomislav.”

The priest sighed. “My guess is that they are not of Adam’s blood.” In haste: “That doesn’t mean they’re evil. Think of Leshy, domovoi, poleviki, such-like harmless sprites-well, sometimes a touch mischievous, but sometimes good friends to poor humans—”

“On the other hand,” Petar said, “think of viljai.” “Be still!” Ivan shouted in a flash of wrath. “No more croaking out of you, hear me? I may well ask the bishop to send me a different confessor.”

He turned back to Tomislav. “I’m sorry, old fellow,” he said.

“I. . . am not... that tender-skinned,” the priest of the zadruga answered with difficulty. “It seems to be true, in the past few years a vilja has been flitting about my neighborhood. God forgive the malicious gossipers.”

He squared his shoulders. “My guess is that we’d do best, both for ourselves and in the sight of God, to let those people go,” he said. “Take them back to’ the sea, under spears if you like, but take them back and bid them farewell.”

“I dare not do that, save at the behest of an overlord,” Ivan replied. “Nor would I if I could, before we are quite certain that no harm can come of it.”

“I know,” Tomislav said. “Well, then, here’s my advice. Keep them prisoners, but treat them kindly. And let their headman go home with me, that we may get acquainted.”

“What?” shrilled Petar. “Are you mad?” Ivan himself was startled. “You’re reckless, at least,” he said.

“That wight is huge. When he has recovered, he could rip you asunder.”

“I hardly think he’ll try,” Tomislav answered low. “At worst, what can he slay but my flesh, whereafter my parishioners will cut him down? I’ve long since lost any fear of departing this life.”

The zadruga was a hamlet of less than a hundred souls, whose families were close kin. It lay a full day’s travel from Skradin, on a path that wound northerly, then westerly, through the woods around the lake, though never in sight of yon water. Here men had once cleared land along a brook and settled down to live by farming, with timber cutting, charcoal burning, hunting, and trapping on the side. They worked the soil in common, as they would have done were they free peasants. Most of them were actually serfs, but it made small difference, for the nobles of Hrvatska were seldom oppressive or extortionate, and nobody wanted to leave.

The thorp formed a double row amidst croplands, shaded by trees left standing. Of wood, one- or two-roomed, thatch-roofed, houses stood off the ground, with stalls beneath for livestock and gangplanks to the living quarters. The lane between them was muddy when it was not dusty, and thick with dung. Smells were not offensive, though; sweet green distances swallowed them up. Nor did dwellers pay much heed to the flies of summer. Behind each home was a kitchen garden.

Granaries stood about, small, slat-sided, elevated on skinny boles whose roots made birdlike feet, as on Baba Yaga’s famous abode. A couple of sheds held tools and related necessities. Twowheeled carts were parked beside when not in use; these were gaily painted. At one end of the lane was a little workshop, at the opposite end the chapel, hardly larger, also colored in fanciful designs, the shakes of its roof bulging to form an onion dome that upheld the Cross. There was no mill, but foundations and the crumbled remnants of an earthen dam showed there formerly had been. Nowhere did fields and meadows reach beyond sight. The forest encompassed them. Some places it was at a distance, other places it crowded close, but everywhere it brooded, crowns in sunlight but full of shadows beneath. Most of the trees were oak or beech, with a mingling of different kinds. Brush grew dense between.

In many ways the settlement reminded Vanimen of Als. As time passed, he came to understand how shallow the likeness was.

The journey here, on a borrowed ass, had been agony. Once in Tomislav’s house, with a bed to rest in and plenty of hearty food, the merman healed faster than a human would have done. A second Faerie gift was the speed wherewith he mastered the Hrvatskan language. Erelong he and the priest began to hold real discourse, which day by day grew less halting. After people lost fear of him, he came to know them also, and somewhat about their lives.

He sat with Tomislav, sharing a bench, on the gangway landing below the long-raftered roof. It was Sunday, when men rested after their worship. The priest had been laboring at harvest as hard as anyone; Vanimen, now hale, had lent strength which was great if unskilled.

Summer was yielding to autumn. Leaves seemed paler green than erstwhile, a few already brown, red, gold; the sky too had gone wan, pierced by geese whose cries awoke wordless longings; when the sun went under the treetops, a breeze that had been cool became chill. Most persons idled at home. Those who passed by simply hailed Tomislav and his guest. That sight had grown familiar. Clad like the rest, aside from bare feet, Vanimen could almost have passed for a human of mighty stature.

The two were drinking beer out of wooden bowls and had grown a trifle tipsy. “You ’re a good sort,” the merman remarked. “Would that I might help you live better.”

“That’s the kind of wish that makes me think you can indeed receive God’s grace if only you’ll choose,” Tomislav said eagerly.

As his own distrust faded, Vanimen had gotten frank. The priest had softened the story when he wrote it in the reports he dispatched, by a boy, to Ivan. “I’ll not lie to him, but I’ll not needlessly worsen hostility against you,” he had explained.

For his part, Tomislav had tried to make clear what sort of land this was. Hrvatska shared monarchy with Hungary. Richly endowed by nature, with numerous seaports for trading abroad, it was an important realm in its own right. It would have been more so, save that the great clans were generally at odds, sometimes at outright war. Alas, then foreigners, notably the damnable Venetians, took advantage of chaos and occupied what was not theirs. At the moment, peace prevailed. An alliance of the Subitj and Frankapan septs gave strong government. Most powerful was the Count of Bribir, Pavle Subitj, who had won to the position of Ban-provincial ruler, save that his province today was the whole country. Ivan was kin to him.

This eventide Vanimen evaded talk of the Faith by saying; “Toil and poverty may purify the soul, but they’re hard on body and mind. Why, you’ve not even a proper housekeeper.” Women came in by turns to work, but none had much time or strength to spare. Often the priest must do his own cooking—which went rather well, for he enjoyed food—and cleaning; always did his own gardening and brewing.

“I need none” really. My wants are simple. I get my share of jollity. You’ll see when we hold harvest festival.” Tomislav paused. “Indeed, my earthly lot became easier in several ways when my poor wife passed away. She was long helplessly ill, needing my care.” He crossed himself. “God called her to come and be healed. I’m sure she’s in Heaven.”

Astonished, Vanimen said, “Were you wedded? I know cler.. gymen formerly were, at least in the North, but I hadn’t heard of it for generations.”

“Aye, we’re Catholic, yet of the Glagolitic rite, which is not Rome’s. Though the Popes have ever misliked that, they’ve not outright forbidden our usages.”

Vanimen shook his head. “I’ll never grasp why you humans wrangle about such snailshell matters-how you can do it, when you might be savoring this world.” He saw his host would fain avoid dispute, and went on, “But tell me, if you will, of your past. I’ve heard mere shards thus far.”

“There’s naught to tell,” answered Tomislav. “A most ordinary, stumbling mortal life. It can’t interest you, who for centuries have known marvels beyond my imagining.”

“Oh, it would,” Vanimen murmured. “You are as strange to me as I to you. If you would let me glimpse your inwardness, might see-well, not only how the tribe of Adam inhabits earth, but why. . . .”

“You might see what God means!” Tomislav exclaimed. “Ha, that chance is worth baring my breast to you.

“Not that I’ve much to reveal. Ask what questions you will as I go along.” Talking, the man let his voice drop. His gaze went outward, over the roof opposite, to trees and sky-to lost years, Vanimen supposed. Now and then he took a swallow of beer, but not with his customary gusto; it was a thing his body did to keep his throat moist.

“I was born a serf, though not here: in Skradin, ‘in the shadow of the castle,’ as the saying goes. My father was a groom there. The chaplain of that time thought me worth teaching to read and write. When I reached the proper age, fourteen, he recommended me to the bishop. Thus I went to Zadar to study for holy ordershard work in truth, for both flesh and spirit. Nonetheless, there was a city full of liveliness, men from beyond every horizon, worldly goods, worldly pleasures. I confess, for a while I fell into sin. Afterward I repented, and dare believe I’ve been forgiven, and may have gained a little insight into my fellow creatures.

“Repentance made me long back, however, long for my birthland, simple ways, my own kind of people. No pastorate hereabouts fell open for several years. During them, I was amanuensis to the bishop.

“Meanwhile I’d turn lust into lawful conjugality by arranging to marry a woman from these parts. In fact, because of my wish still more than canonical requirement, that was before I entered orders. Ah, lovely in her youth was my Sena!

“But early on, sadness came over her. At first it may have been due to her new environs. Crowds, noise, chaffering, intrigue, restlessness, ever-changefulness, those things frightened her and weighed on her soul. Besides, we lost two children to sickness. She found less comfort in the three that lived than I did, or than I hoped she would.

“Finally I got this church. The bishop grumbled at letting me go, but relented when I made clear what it should mean to Sena.

“Well, it was of no avail. More babies of hers died or were stillborn. Worse, our three growing children found this life as bad as she’d found the city. They missed the outside world; they chafed, waxed rebellious. My ordination had freed my whole family from serfdom. Thus no law bound them in place. One by one, when they grew old enough, they defied us and broke away.

“First Franjo went to sea. After a few voyages, his ship was never heard of again. It may have been wrecked, it may have fallen to pirates or slavers. Could be, this moment, my son is a eunuch in some Turk’s harem. Kyrie eleison.

“It was less bad for Zinka. She wed a merchant she met once when we were in Shibenik-wed him without our leave, almost the day afterward. We could do naught, for the priest was a countryman of his and he took her home with him to Austria. Never a word has come since. I pray she is happy. Christe eleison.

“Later our younger son, Juraj, ran off. He’s in Split, working for a Venetian factor-Venice, the ancient enemy. I hear about him from time to time, through the kindness of a tradesman I know; but I never hear from him. Kyrie eleison.

“Maybe you can guess how this clawed Sena’s heart, which she could never harden. A few years after she bore her last child, she withdrew into silence, and scarcely moved. . . only lay there in bed, empty-eyed. Though I wept when she died, ten years ago. I knew it was God’s mercy. And our little daughter was still alive then, still alive for her.”

Tornislav shook himself. He uttered a laugh. “You must think me sodden with self-pity,” he said as he came back to awareness of the evening. “Not at all, not at all. God gives me many consolations: Himself, the greenwood, music, merrymaking, fellowship, the trust of my flock, and, yes, the love of their small children—”

He stared into his bowl. “This is empty,” he announced. “Yours too. Let me go tap the keg. We’ve time before vespers.”

When he returned, Vanirnen said with care: “I also have lost children.” He did not add that he had lost them forever. “Tell me, you bespoke a girl who came late. Did she likewise die?”

“Yes,” Tomislav told him, plumping back onto the bench. “She was a lovely maiden.”

“What happened?”

“No man knows. She drowned in the lake, where she had wandered. Maybe she stumbled, hit her head on a root. For once, it can’t have been the vodianoi’s doing, because after many days of search we did find her body afloat—”

-bloated and stinking, Vanimen knew.

“I, I did not have her buried with her mother and the rest,” Tomislav said. “I carted the casket to Shibenik.”

“Why?”

“Oh, my thought was-oh, maybe she’d lie easier—I was dazed, you understand. The zhupan helped me get permission.” As if springing to an attack, Tomislav leaned close and went on: “I warned you, mine would not be a very stirring tale. Besides, you’ve yet to outlive your own woes.”

While Vanimen had more steadiness of mind than n:t°st merfolk, he could shift a topic or a mood as swiftly as seemed desirable. “Aye, for my whole tribe,” he said. “I meant to raise this matter with you.”

“You’ve done that”-Tomislav attempted a smile-“in words which got pungent.”

“Merely to complain that they’re still kept penned; and with females and young apart from males, I hear.”

“Well, their conduct was unseemly. Talk about it became a threat to public morals, Petar claimed.”

“How long must this go on?” Vanimen smote his thigh. “I see before me-how. sharply I see, feel, hear, smell, taste-their misery in unfreedom.”

“I’ve told you,” Tomislav said. “The Ban’s decision is that they be held, properly cared for, till he’s gotten full information about them. I think that time draws nigh. You and I between us, we’ve learned much. Now that you’ve got the Hrvatskan tongue, you can speak with him yourself. He desires that.”

The Liri king shook his head. “When? I gather he’s busy, fares up and down the realm, may be gone for weeks at a stretch. Meanwhile, I say, my people are in quiet torment. Your baron may think he feeds them well, but my own belly tells me there’s too much grain and milk, not enough fish. They’ll sicken-from lack of water, too. Doubtless they get ample to drink, but when were they last swimming, when were they last down below, as nature meant for them? You let me refresh myself in the brook here, but even so, I sense how my flesh is slowly parching.”

Tomislav nodded. “I know, Vanimen, friend. Or what I don’t know, I can guess. Yet what may be done?”

“I’ve thought on that,” the merman said with rising spirit. “A short ways hence is a lake. Set us free there. A part of us on any given day, no doubt; the rest will be hostages, abiding their turns. It won’t be as good as the sea, but it will sustain us, it will bring us back from what’s half death.

“Besides, I gather that nobody fishes the lake. We could and would. It must be aswarm. We’d fetch back plenty to share with you humans. It’ll more than pay the cost of keeping us. Would that appeal to your baron?”

Tomislav frowned. “It might, were the lake not accursed.”

“How?”

“A vodianoi lairs there, a water monster. It plundered nets that fishermen cast forth. When they sent boats with armed men after it, their weapons would not wound. The boats got sunken, and brave lads who could not swim were drowned. Once folk wanted a mill here, that grain need not go clear to Skradin for grinding. When they’d well-nigh finished, the vodianoi came upstream and wallowed in the millpond. Such was the terror that men destroyed what they’d made, so that it’d go back to the lake.”

Vanimen forced himself to ask: “Why has a priest like you not banned it?”

“The folk would not have that. Church and nobility think it best to heed their wish. An exorcism would drive off all beings of the halfworld from these parts, and some are believed to bring good luck. Better be denied use of the lake, and in the wildwood sometimes be tricked by Leshy-better that than have no polevik to keep blight from the crops, no domovoi to embody a household and its well-being, no Kikimora that may get the whim to aid a wife overwhelmed by work. . . .” Tomislav sighed. “Pagan, yes, but a harmless paganism. It touches not the true faith of the people, and it helps them endure lives that are often charged with sorrow. The Bogomils have expelled every such olden survival, wherever their sect prevails; but the Bogomils are joyless, they hate this world that God made beautiful for us.”

After a breath of two, Tomislav added in a near whisper, “Yes, that which haunts the waters and the wildwood can also be beautiful. . . .”

Vanimen scarcely heard. His words blazed forth, as he sprang to his feet and lifted a fist against the evening star:

“Why, this is just where we can help you, we merfolk! A chance to prove our goodwill! I myself will lead the troop that drives the monster away!”

II

There was a man in Hadsund called Aksel Hedebo, a well-to-do dealer in the horses that were a Danish export. Ingeborg had often been with him. However, it was a surprise when she appeared at his establishment, accompanied by a straightforward-looking young fellow, and requested a confidential meeting. “We have a favor to ask,” she said, “and would make you a small gift to win your kindness.”

The finger ring she revealed, cupped in her palm to be hidden from his apprentices, was no trinket. He guessed its worth at five silver marks. “Follow me, then,” he replied, mas~-:faced, and led the visitors from the working part of the house to the residential, and through a door which he closed.

The room beyond was darkly wainscotted, massively furnished, with excellent glass in the windows. Aksel curtained these, which brought a dusk suitable for secrets. Taking the ring, he seated himself at a table and regarded the curious figures in the gold. “Sit down, you two,” he ordered rather than invited.

They sank to the edges of chairs. Their gaze sought him, anxious. He was fat, blue-jowled, heavy-mouthed, clad in rich garb which gave off a stronger than common smell of stale sweat. After a while he looked up. “Who are you?” he addressed Niels.

The latter stated his name, birthplace, and seafaring trade. The merchant’s eyes probed and probed. They saw him, like the woman, clean, well-groomed, attired in new clothes. But the marks of sun, wind, hardship were as yet little softened upon either of them.

“What will you of me?” Aksel queried.

Ingeborg spoke: “It’s a long tale. As a trader yourself, you’ll understand if we hold much of it back. The short of the business is that we’ve come into some fortune and need help placing it. Niels, here, thinks we might best buy our way into shipping. You deal with captains, you have outland connections-surely with the. . . the Hanseatic League, is that right, Niels? If you can send us to a suitable man, with your own persuasion that he hearken”—she flashed the smile she had used in the marketplace-“you’ll not find us niggards.”

Aksel tugged at a lock of black hair. “A queer offer, from such as you,” he said presently. “I must know more. How big is this fortune, and how did you win it?”

His glance went to the purse which hung plump at Niels’ belt. Within that leather were coins of the realm, which should excite no remark. Ingeborg had gotten them from a goldsmith in town whom she likewise knew, a man ready to run his risk of the law finding him out when she would sell him a lump of precious metal at well below its true value. She and her companion bore far more wealth on them in the form of pieces sewn into their garments, but this was against unforseen need in the near future.

Her tone remained cool: “What the sum truly comes to, that’ll depend on what we can do with it-wherefore we seek your counsel. It’s trerasure trove, you see.”

Aksel stiffened. “Then it’s the Crown’s! Do you want to be hanged?”

“No, no, naught like that. Let me tell. You must remember Herr Ranild and his cog, how he left earlier in the year on a voyage that he was close-mouthed about, and has not been heard of since. Niels was a crewman, and Ranild brought me along.”

“Hoy?” The dealer recovered from his surprise. “Hm, well, folk hereabouts did wonder what had become of Cod-Ingeborg. But a woman at sea, she’s bad luck.”

“No,” Niels denied in quick anger.

Ingeborg gestured him to keep still and went on: “He was shorthanded and in haste. I could be useful.”

“Yes,” Aksel snickered. Niels glared at him.

Ingeborg kept her head aloft. “Besides,” she said, “word had come to me, as word of this or that often does. Put together with what Ranild heard in different wise, it pointed at a treasure to be gotten, out of a heathen burial in a midocean place. Thus, no robbery, no sacrilege, no withholding of anybody’s due.

“Gold awakened greed, though, and led to killing. You recall what ruffians those were, save for Niels. Afterward a terrible storm smote. The upshot was that only we two are left alive of the souls who fared forth upon Berning, and the ship is lost. But we brought certain metal ashore, and now we mean to have the good of it.”

Silence fell, until Aksel snapped. “Is this true?”

“I’ll swear to you by every saint, or whatever oath you wish, that each last word is true,” Ingeborg said. “So will Niels.”

The youth nodded violently.

“Hm, hm.” Again Aksel tugged his greasy hair. “You’ve spun me half a thread of your yarn.”

“I told you we would. The reasons why need not trouble you.” Ingeborg grinned. “What did you ever tell your wife about me?”

She grew earnest again, tautened still more, and urged, “You stand to gain much for slight effort and no hazard. We seek not to overstep the law. Rather, we want guidance to keep us within it. At the same time, it’d be foolish to blab, when a mighty man can always find some pretext to strip us bare.”

“Ye-e-es,” Aksel agreed. “you’re clever to see from the outset that you need a patron, who’ll shield you and get you into a trade where you can prosper quietly.” He frowned at the ring, which he turned over and over on the table before him.

“The Hansa,” Niels blurted. “Their ships carry most cargoes throughout the North, don’t they? I hear how the cities of the League grow ever greater-kings fear them—Could I become a shipowner of theirs—”

Aksel shook his head. “Scant hope there, lad. I know them well. They’re grasping devils, jealous of what they have, unfriendly to outsiders, chary of aught that might upset by the least bit the power of a magnate or a guild. For instance, Visby on the island of Gotland, Visby grants broad freedoms to merchants, but only if they’re Gotlander born. I think if you went to one of those uncrowned princes, he’d just lead you on till he saw how to get you wrung dry, and belike me into the bargain.”

Niels flinched. Ingeborg laid a hand over his. “There must be somewhere to go!” he protested.

“Maybe, maybe,” Aksel said. “You’ve caught me off guard. Let me think—” He set the ring twirling on the table. Its whiff seemed unnaturally loud. “Um-m-m.. . Copenhagen. . . big seaport, enfeoffed to the bishop of Roskilde, who lets no guilds take root there. . . aye, each burgher pursues his trade under license of his own from the city authorities. . . . Maybe. I know hardly anything more, for little of my stock goes that way.”

“You see,” Ingeborg said, “if you allow yourself to, you can help us. Take time to think onward. First, if I know you, you’ll dicker about your price.”

Aksel lifted his face. They saw it harden. “Why are you sure I will?” he demanded.

“What mean you?” Ingeborg replied. Niels stared in dismay.

“You’ve told me well-nigh naught, and what you did tell is doubtless lies.”

“Remember, we’ll both swear before God to the truth of it.”

“Perjury would be petty among your sins, Cod-lngeborg.” Aksel thrust forward his jaw. “Your story strains belief. Far likelier is that you twain unearthed a hoard in Denmark-unless you committed murder on the high seas; and the gallows punishes that too. Would you drag me down with you? Wariness beseems me.”

The woman considered him. “You act the coward, then.”

“I’m a law-abiding man who has a household to support.”

“Shit! I said you act the coward, like a strolling player. I know you, I know your kind,” Ingeborg avowed in huge scorn. “You’ve. decided, all at once, you’ll rob us yourself. Well, you can’t do it. Dismiss us to try elsewhere, or bargain like a decent scoundrel.”

Niels shifted about and laid hand to the sailor’s knife he wore.

Aksel made a smile. “Ah, now, my dear. It’s only that I’ve no wish either to flirt with the hangman. I need assurance-to start with, a look at that hoard.”

Ingeborg rose. “Come, Niels. Here is nothing for us.”

“Wait.” Aksel’s tone stayed calm. “Sit down. Let’s talk further.”

Ingeborg shook her head. “The years have given me a nose for treachery. Come, Niels.”

The youth found his feet. Aksel raised an arm. “I bade you wait,” he said. “Or must I call my apprentices to seize you?”

“Never will they!” Niels yelled.

Ingeborg hushed him. “What have you in mind?” she asked quite coolly.

“Why, this,” Aksel answered with his ongoing smile. “I suspect you’re guilty either of piracy or of stealing royal property. Certain it is that you’ve not so much as wondered what tax may be due on your gains. Now, you are paupers and without families of your own, but God has called me to a higher station in life; I’ve more, far more to lose. Why should I risk ruin. . . for anything less than the entire hoard?”

When they stood moveless, he added, “I’d give you something, of course.”

They stayed mute. He scowled. “Very well,” he said, and slapped the table. “Be clear in your minds that I did not offer to become your accomplice. I just put a question to see how you’d behave. My duty is to report this matter-no, not to the sheriff; direct to the baron. Meanwhile, I can’t let you escape, can I?

“Think well, you twain. I’ve heard that Junker Falkvor’s executioner is more skillful than most. He’ll get your whole tale out of what is left of you, for his lord.”

“And you’ll have a nice reward, no doubt,” the woman fleered.

“That is the cautious course for me,” Aksel pursued. “I’d be sorry to follow it, for I’ve happy memories of you, Ingeborg, and your comrade has a whole life before him. Therefore sit down, and let me try bringing you to reason.”

“Niels,” Ingeborg said.

Her friend understood. His knife came forth, of terrifying size in that dim room.

“We are going,” he said. “You’ll take us out. If we have any trouble, you’ll die first. Up!”

Abruptly blanched, Aksel rose. This was no longer a boy who confronted him. Niels sheathed the blade but kept him close by. Ingeborg dropped the ring down her bosom.

They left the house as three. In an alley some distance off, Niels released Aksel. After the trader had stumbled into the street, Ingeborg’s bitterness broke loose: “I thought he was the least bad of the lot. Where in Christendom is mercy?”

“Best we move on ere he raises hue and cry,” Niels warned.

They made a devious way to the waterfront on Mariager Fjord. A small ship lay awaiting the tide, to depart for ports along the Sound. They had already engaged passage on her deck and brought aboard what would be needful for them. It had seemed a wise precaution. Since they had additionally paid the captain for a night’s worth of drinking their health, he let them rest in his compartment until he sailed.

III

A full moon stood aloft in a frosty ring. Few stars shone through its brightness, that turned hoar the treetops around the lake and tinged each wavelet with silver. A breeze bore autumn’s chill and rattled leaves which were dying.

The vodianoi rose from the bottom and swam toward shore. He grew old when the moon waned, young when it waxed; this night he was in the flush of power and hunger. The bulk of three war horses, his body, on which grew moss and trailing weeds, was like a man’s save for thick tail, long-toed feet, webbed and taloned forepaws. The face was flattened, with bristles around its cavern of a mouth. Eyes glowed red as coals.

When belly touched ground, he stopped. Through the murk below the trees there reached him a sound of brush being parted and footfalls drawing near. Whatever humans wanted here after dark, maybe one of them would be careless enough to wade out. The vodianoi moved no more than a rock. The argent ripples he had raised faded away.

A shape flitted out of shadow, to poise on the grass at the water’s edge: upright, slim, white as the moon. Laughter trilled. “Oh, you silly! Let me show how to lurk.” Wind-swift, it swarmed into an oak nearby. “Let me feed you.” Acorns flew, to bounce off the monster’s hide.

He grunted thunder-deep wrath. These past three years the vilja had teased him. He had even wallowed onto land a few painful yards, seeking to catch her, gaining naught but her mirth. Soon she must leave the wood, to spend winter beneath lake and stream, but that availed not the vodianoi. Though cold made her dreamy, she never grew too unaware or too slow for him. Besides, when she was not actually rousing him to fury, he knew in his dimwitted fashion that it was unlikely he could harm such a wraith. The only good thing was that in that season she merely greeted him, like a sleepwalker, when they met.

“I know,” she called. “You hope you’ll grab you a fine, juicy man. Well, you shan’t.” With a gesture she raised a whirly little wind around him. “They’re mine, those travelers.” Her mood swung about. The wind died away. “But why do they fare at night?” she asked herself in a tone of bewilderment. “And they bring no fire to see by. Men would bring flre—would they not? I can’t remember. . . .”

She hugged her knees where she sat on high, rocked back and forth, let her hair blow cloudy-pale on a breeze that hardly stirred the locks of those who approached. All at once she cried, “They are not men-most of them—not really,” and climbed higher to be hidden.

The vodianoi hissed after her, hunched back down, and waited.

The mermen came out of the forest. They numbered a score, led by Vanimen, naked save for knife belts but carrying fish spears and hooped nets. Ivan Subitj was among the half-dozen humans who were along to observe. Guided through gloom by companions with Faerie sight, they had made stumbling progress, and blinked as if dazed when suddenly moonlight spilled across them.

“Yonder he is!” Vanimen called. “Already we’ve found him. I thought an absence of flame would aid us in that.”

Ivan peered. “A boulder?” he asked.

“No, look close, espy those ember eyes.” Vanimen raised steel and shouted in his own tongue.

The mermen splashed out. Bellowing in glee, fangs agleam, the vodianoi threshed after the nearest. The fleet creature eluded him. He chased another, and failed.

Now he and they were swimming. The mermen closed in, jeered, pricked with their forks. The vodianoi dived. They followed.

For a minute, water roiled and spouted.

Silence fell, the lake rocked back toward calm, heaven again dreamed its icy dreams. A soldier’s voice was lost in that immensity: “The fight’s gone too deep for us to see.”

“If it is a fight,” a companion said. “That thing’s immortal till Judgment. Iron won’t bite on it. What hope have those hunters of yours, lord, witchy though they be?”

“Their headman has told me of several things he can try ,” Ivan answered. He was not one to confide in underlings. “Which is best, he must find out.”

“Unless it slays his band,” a third man said. “What then?”

“Then we must abide here till dawn, when we can find our way home,” the zhupan stated. “The beast can’t catch us ashore.”

“There’s other things as might.” The second trooper stared around him. Moonbeams glimmered in his eyeballs, making them blank.

Ivan raised a cross he wore around his neck. A crystal covered a hollow theren. “This carries a fingerbone of St. Martin,” he said. “Pray like true Christians, and no power of darkness can harm us.”

“Your son Mihajlo thought different,” a soldier dared mutter.

The zhupan heard, and struck him on the cheek. The slap woke an echo. “Hold your tongue, you oaf!” Men signed themselves, thinking dissension boded ill.

Slow hours passed. Frost deepened. Those who waited shivered, stamped feet, tucked hands in armpits. Breath smoked from them. Something white stirred restlessly at the top of a great oak, but nobody cared to peer closely after it.

The moon was sinking when a cry tore out of their throats. A blackness had broken the glade. A hideous shape moved toward them. It halted some distance off, near enough that they could see the mermen tread water to ring the vodianoi in.

Vanimen entered the shallows, stood up, walked to the humans. Wetness dripped from him like mercury. Pride blazed forth like the sun that was coming. “Victory is ours,” he proclaimed.

“God be praised!” Ivan jubilated. After a moment, warrior hardheadedness returned. “Are you sure? What did you do? What’s to happen next?”

Vanimen folded arms across his mighty chest and laughed. “We could kill him, aye. But on this very night of his greatest strength, we could outswim him. Our weapons gave pain. None of us did he seize, the while we tormented him till it grew beyond bearing. Also, we showed him how we take fish. In that, he cannot match us either. We can snatch them before he does, scare them off, leave him famished.

“At least we made him know, with the help of a spell for understanding, that we would do this as long as needful. Best he spare his own anguish and depart forthwith. We’ll escort him up the river, past your town, and let him go on thence, into unpeopled highlands. He’ll grieve you no more.”

Ivan embraced him. Men cheered. Mermen responded lustily from the water. The vodianoi brooded.

“Follow along the edge,” Vanimen advised. “We’ll keep in sight of you.” He turned to rejoin his folk.

The white shape flitted down through withering leaves. Many came along when it sprang from a lower branch to earth. “Ah, no,” it sang, “would you drive the poor old ugly hence? This is his home. The lake will be lonely without him, a wonder will be gone, and who shall I play with?”

Vanimen saw the form dance over glittery grass, the form of a naked maiden, lovely to behold but colorless, seeming almost transparent. No mist of breath left nostrils or lips. “Rousalka!” he bawled, and fled into the lake.

The being stopped. “Who are you?” she asked the zhupan in her thin, sweet voice. “Should I remember you?”

Sweat studded Ivan’s skin, he shuddered, yet it was with hatred and rage rather than fear that he advanced. “Demon, ghost, foul thief of souls!” he shrilled. “Begone! Back to your grave, back to your hell!”

He slashed with his sword. Somehow it did not strike. The vilja lifted her hands. “Why are you angry? Be not angry,” she begged. “Stay. You are so warm, I am so alone.”

Ivan dropped his blade and raised his cross. “In the name of the Holy Trinity, and St. Martin whose banner St. Stefan bore into battle, go.”

The vilja whirled about and ran into the wood. She left less mark by far in the hoarfrost than a woman would have done. They heard her sobbing, then that turned into laughter, then there was no more trace of her.

Bells pealed rejoicing till all Skradin rang. No person worked, save to prepare a festival that began in the afternoon and continued past sunset.

The sight had been awesome for those who were awake before dawn, when the vodianoi passed by under guard of the mermen. It was as if, for a moment, the world—castle, church, town, houses, fields, ordered hours and the cycle that went measured from Easter to Easter-had parted like a veil, men glimpsed what it had hidden from them, and that was no snug Heaven but ancient, unending wildness.

By early daylight, when Vanimen’s hunters returned with the zhupan and his band, fright was forgotten. Talk aroused of starting fishery. True, the deep forest was still a chancy place to enter, and would not be cleared away for generations. Yet logging proceeded, year by year; plowland stretched outward, homes multiplied; cultivation had tamed a sizeable arc of the lakeside. The monster gone, it should be safe to launch boats from that part, if one did not row too near the wooded marge.

The zhupan confirmed the good news. He had seen the vodianoi leave his conquerors and make a slow way on upstream, panting, sometimes able to swim, sometimes groping over rocks that bruised, till lost from sight. The creature moved brokenly. Belike doom would overtake him long before Judgment; hopelessness might well make him lay down his bones to rest.

Father Petar conducted a Mass of thanksgiving, with a somewhat sour face. Thereafter, merriment began. Presently the nearest meadow surged with folk in their holiday garb, embroidered vests, flowing blouses, wide-sweeping skirts for the revealing of an ankle in the dance. An ox roasted over a bonfire, kettles steamed forth savory smells above lesser flames, barrels gurgled out beer, mead, wine. Bagpipes, flutes, horns, drums, single-stringed fiddles resounded through the babble.

Freely among the peasants moved the Liri folk. Ivan Subitj had taken it on himself to release them. He had no fret about their breaking parole and fleeing. Friendship laved them today and their morrow looked full of hope. For decency’s sake he had arranged that they be clad, though this must for the most part be in borrowed clothes that were old and fitted poorly. That meant little to them, especially in their happiness at being back together. Anyhow, garments were readily shed when male and female had left the village and found a bush or a tree-screened riverbank.

The noisiest, cheeriest celebrant was Father Tomislav. He had come hither with Vanimen after Ivan approved the merman’s idea, and only with difficulty had he been restrained from joining the expedition. Now, when men linked hands around a cauldron to dance the kolo, his vigor sent whipcracks through their circle. “Hai, hop! Swing a leg! Leap like David before the Lord! Ah, there, my dears,”-to pretty girls as he whirled by them—“just you wait till we and you make a line!”

Vanimen and Meiiva had repaid long separation. They entered the meadow when the kolo was ending. Luka, son of Ivan, pushed through the crowd to greet them. He was a slender lad, whose bright outfit was in scant accord with his thoughtful mien. From the beginning he had been greatly taken by the merfolk, eager to learn about them, ever arguing for their better treatment. After Vanimen’s exploit, he approached them with adoration.

“Hail,” he said through the racket around. “You look somber. You should be joyous. Can I help you in any way?”

“Thank you, but I think not,” The Liri king replied.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ll speak of it later with your father. Let me not shadow your pleasure.”

“No, I pray you, tell me. Maybe I can do something.”

“Well—” Vanimen decided. Meiiva, who spoke no Hrvatskan as yet, slipped quietly into the background. “Well, since you’ll have it so, Luka. Have you heard that we met a rousalka by the lake?”

The stripling blinked. “What said you?”

“Rousalka. The revenant of a maiden that haunts the water where she drowned.”

“Oh.” Luka’s eyes widened; he caught his breath. “The vilja. You saw her?” He paused. “No, I’ve not heard. It’s a thing that men would avoid talk of.”

“Is ‘vilja’ your word?” Vanimen spoke stiffly. “I had to do with one of the kind once, afar in the North. Thus I recognized this for what it was. Terror overwhelmed me and I fled. The shame of that is a gnawing in my breast. Your father drove it off, but when afterward I sought to explain why courage had left me, he said he’d liefer not hear.”

Luka nodded. “Yes, he has his reasons. However, I think he’ll yield if you press him. The matter’s no secret-woeful, but not disgraceful.”

“Such a. . . vilja. . . mocks our triumph,” Vanimen said. “I hear men bleat about fishing, my tribe for helpers. Are they witless? The vodianoi could merely devour them. How can they fail to dread what the vilja will do?”

“Why, what might that be?” Luka asked in surprise. “Minor mischief, as the Leshy inflict—a wind to blow somebody’s washing off the grass, a nursling taken from its mother when she isn’t looking, but always soon given back—and a sprig of wormwood will keep her at a distance. No doubt a man who let her beguile him would be in mortal sin. But surely none will, nor does it seem she’s even tried. After all, a ghost is terrifying in itself. I know that, sir, I know it better than I wish I did.”

The merman gave the lad a close look. “How?”

Luka shivered in the sunlight, the noise and music and smoke. “I was with my brother on that hunt where she found him, two years agone. I too saw her face, the face of Nada who drowned herself the year before—”

A hand grabbed him by the neck, flung him to the ground. “You lie!” Father Tomislav screamed. He had wandered up, unnoticed, and overheard. “Like the rest of them, you lie!”

Standing over the sprawled boy, amidst a stillness that spread outward, amidst eyes that stared inward, the priest mastered his fit. “No, you don’t, I’ll believe you don’t,” he said thickly. “A chance likeness or a sleight of Satan deceived you. I’m sorry, Luka. Forgive my foul temper.” He looked from person to person. The tears broke out of him. “My daughter was not a suicide,” he croaked. “She is not a condemned shade. She rests in Shibenik, in holy earth. Her, her soul... in... Paradise—” He stumbled off. The gathering parted to let him go.

Rain dashed against castle walls, in a night that howled. Cold crept out of the stone, past the tapestries, and darkness laid siege to lamps. Ivan Subitj sat across a board from Vanimen of Liri. He had dismissed his servants, keeping his wife awake. She sat in a comer, warming herself as best she could at a brazier, till he signaled for more wine.

“Yes,” he said, “I’d better give you the whole tale. Else you might shun the lake; and I do have hopes of your settling down amongst us, enriching us by your fisher skills. Besides, there’s no shame for my family in what happened-not really. Grief—” He gusted a sigh. “No, disappointment; and I’m well aware I do wrong to feel thus.”

He stroked the scar that puckered his countenance. “No shame to you either, Vanimen, that you recoiled from her: not if such beings are as fearsome in the North as you’ve related. I could tell you of horrors I’ll bear inside me to the grave, and I reckon myself a brave man. But—I know not why; maybe we’re different from the Rus in some way that endures after death itself-whatever the cause, a vilja is not the grisly sort of thing that you say a rousalka is. Oh, a man would be unwise to follow her. . . but he’d have a soul to lose. You—” Ivan chopped his words off short.

Vanimen flashed a hard smile.

Ivan drank. Thereafter he said hastily: “My grudge against Nada is just that she caused my older son to forsake the world. Well, I think she did. I could be wrong. Who knows the wellsprings of the heart, save God? But Mihajlo was such a lively youth; in him, I saw myself reborn. And now he’s in a monastery. I should not regret that, should I? It makes his salvation likelier. Luka seems more cut out for a monk than ever Mihajlo was; and it’s become Luka who inherits- No, he won’t, for a zhupan is elected by the peers of his clan, or appointed out of it by the Crown, and they’ll see he’s not a fighter.”

Goblets went to mouths for a time in which the storm alone had voice. Finally Vanimen asked low, “Was the vilja indeed once the daughter of Tomislav?”

“He cannot endure that thought;’ Ivan replied, “and those who care for him do not bespeak it in his hearing. I forgive what he did to my son this day. No real harm, and Luka should have been more alert.

“Nevertheless-well, let me share with you what everybody hereabouts knows. Maybe you, who are of Faerie, can judge better than we’ve done, we humans.

“You must understand that Sena, Tomislav’s wife, was a woman born to sorrow. Her father was a bastard of the zhupan before me, by a serf girl, whom they say was of rare beauty. He manumitted his son, who became a guslar—a wandering musician, a ne’er-do-well—and at last shocked people by bringing home a bride from the Tzigani, those landless pagans who’ve lately been drifting in. She herself was Christian, of course, though it’s unsure how deep the conversion went.

“Both died young, of sickness. Their daughter Sena was raised by kinfolk who—I must say-blamed every childish wrong she did on her heritage. I’ve often wondered if it was pity as much as her loveliness that made Tomislav seek her hand. “You’ve heard of their afflictions, A while after Nada was born, Sena sank into dumb, helpless mourning, and lay thus until she died, What memories of her mother did the girl afterward carry around? In haphazard fashion, Nada learned from neighbor women what she was supposed to know, more or less. Her father spent his whole love upon her, who was all he had left, but what good can a man do? He may have confided in her more than he should—a priest does carry the woes of many others—he may have made her see too early that this world is full of weeping. I know not, I’m only a soldier, Vanimen,”

Ivan drank, summoned fresh wine, sat again mute before he went on:

“I remember Nada well, myself. As zhupan, I travel much about in the hinterland, to keep abreast of what the knezi-judges over villages—and pastors and such are doing. Besides, Tomislav brought his family here whenever he could, as on market days. We’ve no proper marketplace here, but folk do meet to trade back and forth. I suppose in part he hoped to ease the restlessness of his older children.

“Oh, Nada became fair! I heard, too, that she was quick-witted, and kinder-hearted, even toward animals, than is best for a peasant, Certainly I saw her laughterful and frolicsome. Yet already then, and seldom though we did meet, I would also see her withdrawn, silent, sad, for no clear cause.

“I suppose that’s a reason she had no suitors, however gladly the young men would dance and jest with her when she was in the mood. Besides, her dowry would be very small. And she was overly slender; how well could she bear babe after babe, to keep a household alive? Fathers must have weighed these things on behalf of their sons,”

Ivan swallowed, put his goblet down, stared at a shuttered window as if to look beyond and lose himself in the rain. “Well,” he said, “here comes the part that’s hard for me to tell, Let me go fast,

“She had broken into bloom when Mihajlo, my older son, came visiting and saw her here in Skradin, At once he began paying her court. He’d ride through the woods to her zadruga, and how could Tomislav refuse hospitality? He’d arrange that she come to Skradin for this or that celebration—oh, everything quite proper, but he wanted her and meant to have her, “Mihajlo was. . . is . . . a charming fellow. Nada’s two brothers and her sister had flown the nest, and doubtless she’d heard somewhat herself of a wider realm outside, a realm where maybe her choices were not merely to become a drudge or a nun. . . I know not. I know only that her father, Tomislav, sought me and asked if Mihajlo intended marriage.

“What could I say? I knew my boy. When he wedded, it would be for gain; meanwhile he’d have his sport, also afterward. Tomislav thanked me for my frankness, and said those two must stop seeing each other. Because I think well of him, I agreed. Mihajlo wrangled with me, but in the end gave his promise. She was not that much to him.”

“But he to her—” the merman said, half under his breath. “And her father-she must have loved him too. The melancholy caught her when she was torn asunder—”

“She was found floating in the lake,” Ivan interrupted roughly. “Since then, it seems, she haunts it. You’ve naught to fear from her, though, you merfolk. Need we carry this sad little story onward?” He lifted his vessel. “Come, let’s get drunk together.”

Tomislav went home in the morning. First he met with Vanimen to bid farewell.

That was in a dawn which the rain had washed pure. The two of them stood at the edge of woods. Above, the sky was white in the east, blue overhead, violet enough in the west to hold a planet which trailed the sunken moon. Trees had come all bronze and brass and blood, while fallen leaves crunched underfoot. Stubblefields lay misty. Cocks crowed afar, the single sound in the chill.

Tornislav leaned his staff against a bole and clasped Vanimen’s right hand in both of his. “We’ll meet again, often,” he vowed.

“I would like that,” the merman answered. “Be sure, at least, I will not leave these parts without calling on you.”

The man raised brows. “Why should you ever go? Here you are loved, you and your whole tribe.”

“As a dog is loved. We were free in Liri. Should we become tame animals, no matter how kindly our owners?”

“Oh, you’d never be serfs, if that’s what troubles you. Your skills are too valuable.” Tomislav paused. “True, you’d better become Christians.” It kindled in him; suddenly his face was not homely. “Vanimen, take baptism! Then God will give you a soul that outlives the stars, in the glory of His presence.”

The merman shook his head. “No, good friend. Over the centuries, I’ve witnessed, thrice, the rate of those folk of mine who did that.”

“And-?” the priest asked after a silence.

“I daresay they gained what they yearned for, immortality in Heaven. But here on earth, they forgot the lives they had had. Everything they were went a-glimmering, as if it had never beendreams, joys, facings, everything that was them. There remained meek lowlings whose feet were deformed.” The sea king sighed.

“Tomislav, I do not hate oblivion that much. My kindred feel likewise.”

The man stood undaunted; his beard bristled gray at the earliest whisper of a breeze. “Vanimen,” he urged, “I’ve thought about such things, thought hard”-for an instant, his mouth twisted—“and it seems to me that God makes nothing in vain. Nothing that is from Him shall perish for aye. Yes, this may be heresy of mine. Nonetheless, I can hope that on the Last Day, whatever you forsake will be restored to you.”

“You mayor may not be right,” Vanimen said. “If you are, I still disdain it, I who’ve hunted narwhals under the boreal ice and had lemans that were like northlights”-his voice sank-“I who lived with Agnete- He took his hand free. “No, I’ll not trade that for your thin eternity.”

“But you don’t understand,” Father Tomislav responded. “Oh, I’ve read legends; I know what commonly happens when Faerie folk are received into Christendom. But this needen’t always be. It’s simply for their own protection, I believe. Chronicles tell of a few halfworld beings that got baptism and kept full memory.” He cast his arms around the merman. “I’ll pray for a sign that you will be given this grace.”

IV

Johan Kvag, bishop of Roskilde, often had business in Copenhagen, for he was its liege. In a private room of the house he kept there, he sat long silent while he considered, from his seat whereon were carved the Apostles, the young man in a plain chair before him. Ordinary clothes and Jutish brogue hardly accorded with the gold, given to Mother Church, that had persuaded his major-domo to arrange this audience.

“You have told me less than you could, my son,” he finally said.

Niels Jonsen nodded. His self-possession, at his age and station in life, was remarkable too. “Aye, my lord,” he admitted. “Some might suffer, did the whole tale come out. But I swear before God that I’ve spoken no lie to you, and won the treasure in no wrongful way.”

“And now you would share it with my see. If your reckoning of its worth is correct, that would be a donation an emperor could scarcely match.”

“I’ll leave the dividing to you, and trust in your fairness.”

“You’ve small choice,” the bishop said dryly. “You’ll not stay alive, let alone grow wealthy, without protection.”

“I know it well, reverend excellency.”

Johan cupped his chin. “And still you bargain,” he murmured. “You forget the danger to your spirit that lies in worldly riches.”

“My priest can steer me clear of that, I hope,” said Niels.

“You are a cocky one, aren’t you?”

“No disrespect, sir. But if naught else, I’ve people I’d like to help, beginning with my mother and her brood. Besides, the way the Hansa’s pushing in, meseems the kindgom should be glad of a big shipowner who’s Danish.”

The bishop’s gravity broke in a laugh. “Well spoken!” Niels’ countenance lightened. “Then you’ll take me on?”

“Not that fast, my son, not that fast. There are certain conditions to meet. First, though you keep a secret or two from me, you must tell all to a priest, that he may shrive you.” The sunburnt face drew downward. Johan smiled and added: “I’ll send you to Father Ebbe of St. Nicholas’. That’s your patron, and Ebbe is of seafaring stock himself, lenient about things that others might find overly peculiar.”

“A thousand thanks, my lord.”

“Next you must lead trusty men to the hoard, unbeknownst, for them to examine it.” The bishop bridged his fingers. “We must be careful. If it’s as great as you claim, we cannot bring it forth overnight. Wars would ensue for its possession, on whatever pretext. Few years ago, this city was under Norwegian attack; and when I think of the German dukes—Yes, I suspect our wisest plan in the end will be to leave the major part buried.”

“But you can do so much good with it,” Niels protested.

“Gold cannot buy more in aid of the poor than the land can produce. Nor are clergy immune to temptations, of which the worst may be those of power.”

Johan raised a reassuring palm. “Certainly we’ll have use for considerable amounts,” he went on. “They can be introduced in discreet fashion. Likewise for your career, my son. Not only dare you not burst flamelike into opulence; you’ve much to learn ere you can successfully lead a company.

“We’ll explain that you’ve come into an inheritance, and that I have found you worthy of my favor. This should raise few questions. Folk will suppose you’re the bastard of a well-off man, perhaps kin of mine, who’s died.” At Niels’ scowl: “Nay, no reflection on your mother’s honor. It’s merely what they’ll take for granted, a common kind of event which occasions short-lived gossip, if any.

“In due course, I’ll have you made a burgher, and you can get your licenses for trade. . .. Look less impatient, lad,” the bishop chuckled. “I’ve no intolerable length of time in mind.”

“You’re generous, your reverence.” Niels clenched fist on knee. “But some matters can’t wait very long.”

Johan nodded. “True. You bespoke your family. And doubtless you anticipate pleasures. No vast harm in that, if amidst them you still remember God. And maybe you’ve a venture or two you’d like to begin on at once, that’s within your present abilities? Well, none of these things is impossible, for you will admittedly have money. Your need is just to hold covered how large the sum is.” Joy blazed at him. “Go with my blessing. We’ll talk further tomorrow.”

The moats, walls, watchtowers that guarded Copenhagen were stately. Within them, however, most of the city was houses wooden and thatch-roofed, jammed together along narrow, crooked, mucky streets. The folk who crowded it were mainly laborers, their drabness relieved here and there by the flamboyant rags of a juggler or fiddler; traffic was mainly afoot, save for wagons forcing through with a bow wave of curses. Beggars and foreign seamen gave strangeness but hardly more color. A mounted knight, a rich merchant, a famous courtesan in her litter, would stand out as much by rarity as by finery. Swine, poultry, dogs, children wandered about. Noise went like surf, voices, feet, wheels, hammers. Raw beneath a low gray sky, the air reeked of smoke, dung, offal, graveyards.

And yet, Niels thought, the saying was true: this was indeed free air. It bathed him with hope, made him drunk on dreams. Here was the womb of the future. He could almost set aside the longing for Eyjan that ever querned within him-almost-in this place so utterly sundered from everything of hers.

He reached the inn where he was staying, hurried through the taproom with a bare wave to the landlord and the drinkers, thudded upstairs and along a hallway. The Blue Lion was for those who could afford the best that became a commoner: clean, safe, with a pair of bedroom for hire in addition to the general one. He knocked on a door of the former.

Ingeborg let him in. She had bought an image of the Virgin and stood it on a shelf. He saw from wrinkles in her gown that she had been praying. Her gaze sought his, she trembled and parted her lips but could not speak.

He closed the door. “Ingeborg,” he said, “we’ve won.”

“O-o-oh. . . .” A hand went to her mouth.

“The bishop agrees. He’s a fine fellow. Well, he does want to move slowly, but that’s all right, that’s wise. Our luck has turned.” Niels whooped. He danced where he stood, for the bed left scant floor space. “Our luck, Ingeborg! No more poverty, no more toil, no more whoredom—the world is ours!”

She crossed herself. “Mary, I thank you,” she whispered.

“Aye, me too, we’ll light many candles, but flfst let’s rejoice,” Niels babbled. “We’ll feast this eventide, I’ll have the kitchen get whatever you like and cook it for you, we’ll have wine and tapers and music—Oh, Ingeborg, be glad. You deserve gladness.”

He clasped her waist. She regarded him through tears. “Teach me how to be happy,” she asked.

He fell moveless, staring down at her. It came suddenly to him that she was fair to see, full figure, gentle features, luster of brown eyes and billowing hair. They had kissed before, but quickly, in simple friendliness. Now the whiplash need was off him-off them both. He’d wondered in fleeting moments how that would feel, being free to remember Eyjan all the time. Now he knew; but here was Ingeborg.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, amazed.

“Niels, no,” She tried to draw back. He pulled her against him. Her mingled scents of woman were dizzying. The kiss went on and on.

“Niels,” she breathed shakily into his bosom, “do you understand what you seek?”

“Yes, Ingeborg, darling.” He lowered her to the bed.

-Afterward, as they lay resting in embrace, she said, “I beg one thing of you, Niels.”

“It’s yours.” He stroked the softness of her back.

“Never call me ‘love,’ or ‘dearest,’ or any such word, as you were doing.”

He lifted his head off the bolster, astonished. “What? Why not?”

“We have only each other. Gold or no, it’ll be long before we’ve friends we can trust. Believe you me. Then let there be no lies between us.”

“I care for you!”

“And I for you. Very, very much.” Her lips brushed his cheek. “But you are too young for me, too good—”

“No.”

“And it’s Eyjan you yearn for.”

He had no answer to that.

She sighed. “It’s Tauno for me, of course,” she owned. “I fear we’ve neither of us any chance. Well, maybe I can guide your heart toward a mortal maiden.”

“What of you?” he asked through her tresses.

He felt her shrug. “I’m tough. Besides, whatever happens, while we stay honest, we have each other.”

V

A marble fireplace made warm a chamber which maroon hangings and Persian rug softened. While window glass gave a viewhardly distorted at all-of an inner court where blooming had long since ended, roses from a solarium planter filled a crystal vase on an inlaid table. Books numbered a score, both Greek and Latin. Pavle Subitj, Ban of Hrvatska, was in his heart more a man of the West than of the East.

Tall in a silken robe, white hair and beard neatly trimmed, he seemed no less than the Liri king, though Vanimen, likewise attired in what was his gift, did loom above him. Both had grown too intense in their discourse to remain seated.

“Yes, I hope your tribe will stay in this realm,” he was saying. “Perhaps I’ve not made sufficiently clear how much I want it. Your unique abilities-as fishermen, sailors, pilots you’ll be valuable. But a new war is brewing with Venice. In that, you could be priceless.” He studied the other. “Of course, I’d reward such service as best as I was able.”

Vanimen scowled. “Why should we enter a quarrel that’s none of ours?” he retorted.

“It will be yours, for you will be our countrymen.”

“Indeed? That was not what we came in search of.”

“I know. You wanted to rebuild a Faerie life, which impinged little on mortal mankind. Well, you’ve found what is better. Highest is salvation, immortal souls and the fatherhood of God. However, scoff not at material gains, which themselves comfort the spirit. For instance, you’ve related, in these past days of your visit, how hard and perilous it actually was undersea, how often you knew bereavement. Would you deny your people-your children-liberation from the shark?”

The merman began pacing, back and forth, hands gripped together behind him. “We’d readily be your friends,” he said. “Grant us an islet where we can remain ourselves, and you’ll find us stout partners in work, trade, seafaring... yes, even in war, if that is inescapable. But you demand more. You’d make us into something altogether alien. Why do you require we be christened?”

“Because I must,” Pavle told him. “It would ruin me, before Church and throne and populace alike, if I let a colony of halfworld creatures take root; and who then would be your protector? As it is, I’ve worked harder than you imagine, to contain the news of you. Outside the Skradin vicinage, there go naught but rumors. In that wise I gained peace for everyone to become acquainted. It cannot last.

“Even when you join us, I’ll strive that that happen quietly. No public tidings, no dispatches to King or Pope. Most of you will stay where you now are, or move to the coast nearby if you prefer nautical trades. Those who travel farther, with naval commanders or merchant adventurers, they’ll go one or a few at a time-remarkable, yes, but in human company of limited size.

“That’s for your good as well as mine, Vanimen. Did your story spread wide, excitement might easily take a dangerous turn. Fear of the unknown could link you in ignorant minds with the Devil. It could end with your being hunted down, the fortunate among you butchered, the unfortunate burnt at the stake.”

“Aye,” the merman growled, “you’re right. . . and nonetheless you’d have us become like your kind?”

He halted, straightened to his full height, and said, “No. We’ll return to the waters and our quest. You’ll be rid of us.”

“Suppose I forbid your departure,” the Ban said quietly.

“We’ll elude your troops, or break through them, or die in our freedom.” Vanimen’s tone was as soft.

Pavle smiled sadly. “Peace. I won’t. If indeed you would go, you have my leave. Yet where will you seek, and how? You must needs be barred from this kingdom, and likeliest no Mediterranean coast will have you. If you win back to the ocean, well, you can swim south along Africa, though the toll as you fare will be dreadful. But can you endure the tropics, you breed of the North?”

Vanimen stood mute.

After a minute, Pavle went on: “Let’s imagine you do in some way find a home. What will you have gained? At best, a few centuries. Then Faerie must depart existence, and you with it.”

“Think you so?” Vanimen asked. “Why?” Pavle clapped his shoulder and said, most gently, “I wish I did not. Too much beauty and wonder will perish with the halfworld, and I’ve a feeling that whatever replaces them will have less in common with humanity than it did.”

Faint through walls came the sound of cathedral bells. “Hark,” Pavle said. “The time of yon ringing was ordered not by sun, moon, or stars. A clock has taken that part, a hard, artificial thing, devoid of mystery.

“In my own lifespan I have seen wax the power of bombard, rocket, sapper. In them is the doom of knighthood, which-Arthur, Orlando, Ogier, Huon-ever linked warriors to the Otherworld.

“Wilderness melts away before ax and plow. Meanwhile everything that matters is forgathering in the cities, where all is manmade and the smallest hob-sprite can find no home.

“Yearly farther, in yearly greater numbers, ships ply the seas, guided by compass and astrolabe rather than birdflight, landmarks, a mariner’s sense of oneness with the billows. They will round the earth someday, and Christian steeples rise above the last places where Faerie had refuge.

“For the earth is a globe, you may know, of measurable size. The very tracks of the stars are being measured, closer than the ancients could, and learned men are calculating the architecture of the universe. Their schemes have no room for awe or magic.

“Look here.” Pavle sought the table and picked up two lenses in a wire frame. “This is something I heard was newly invented in Italy, and sent for. As I’ve aged, my eyesight has been failing me at short range, till I could scarcely read or write. Today I slip this thing over the bridge of my nose, and it’s almost like being young again.” He handed them to Vanimen. “A beginning,” he foretold. “The progenitor of instruments which make vision keener than an eagle’s, closer than a mole’s. My descendants will turn them outward on the heavens, inward on themselves. Perhaps God will then terminate the world, lest men question His ways too closely. Or perhaps not. But sure I am that they will have questioned Faerie out of it.”

The merman stared at the spectacles. He held them in his palm as if they were freezing cold.

“Therefore,” Pavle finished, “are you not well advised to accept your fate, gratefully, and seek your home in Paradise? “I won’t press you, save that I must have your decision within a few more months. Think. Go back to Skradin and tell your folk. Speak, too, with that priest in the zadruga whom Ivan esteems. Ask him to pray for you.“ ‘

Alone, Father Tomislav knelt. Winter night engulfed him, still and bitter, making the clay floor gnaw at his knees. He could barely glimpse Christ on the Cross, above the altar, by the light of a candle he had lit to the saint whose name his church bore, and whose effigy he beseeched.

“Holy Andrei,” he said, his voice as lost as the flame, “you were a fisherman when Our Lord called you to come follow Him. Did you ever afterward long back to the sea. . . just the least bit, maybe? Waves alive around you, a salt wind, a gull gliding-oh, you know what I mean. You didn’t regret your ministry. Nothing like that. But you remembered, sometimes—didn’t you? I myself miss the water shiny at the foot of Zadar, and going out in a boat-what a romp, what bigness and freshness!—and me a landlubber born.

“You should understand how the merfolk feel. It isn’t their fault they have no souls, and so can’t properly crave salvation. The paynim among humans don’t crave it either, do they? God made the merfolk for His seas. If they forget the nature He gave them, well, I suppose they could still breathe down below, that kind of thing, but what use would it be? Like a man forgetting how to walk. They’d never learn again aright, I think.

“Mostly, though, the sea’s been their life, their love. Yes, love. Even a dog can love, and the merfolk have minds as good as any man’s. Would I choose to forget my Sena? No. The memories hurt, but I cherish them. You know that, as many Masses as I’ve offered for her soul’s repose.

“Holy Andrei, seafarer, speak to God on behalf of the poor merfolk. Explain how they’ll accept baptism if it doesn’t cost them their memories. They. aren’t being defiant of Him or anything. It’s simply their way. When they have souls, they’ll be different. But why take away from them what they were before? Instead, leave them able to tell men of the wonders He’s created in the deeps, that we may worship Him the more. Isn’t that reasonable?

“Holy Andrei, grant me a sign.” The crude wooden image stirred. Lips curved in a smile, hand reached out in the gesture of benediction.

For a moment Tomislav gaped. Then he fell prostrate, weeping. “Glory be to God, glory be to God!”

When at last he got back on his knees, all was as erstwhile. The candle guttered low, the cold ascended, stars above the roof marched on toward midnight.

“Thank you, Andrei,” Tomislav said humbly. “You’re a true friend.”

After a minute, in sudden shock: “I’ve been vouchsafed a miracle! Me!” He folded his hands. “Lord, I am not worthy.”

He would keep vigil till dawn. “Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name—”

Near morning, when weariness had dazed him, he lifted a timid gaze to the saint’s face. “Andrei,” he mumbled, “they say such terrible things about my little daughter. Could you maybe give me another sign? I know the stories aren’t true. Nada’s where you are. Could be she’s right there at your side looking down on her old dad. If only people would see that. Can’t you show them?”

The carving never stirred. Tomislav lowered his head. Blood trickled into his beard. When daylight glimmered, he rose, bowed before the altar, and departed.

Vanimen and Meiiva walked down the wagon track that went through the forest. Snow had fallen of late, an inch or two that soon melted off bare dirt but abided in purity under the trees. Boughs and twigs reached austere across blueness. The air was quiet and nearly warm.

“His honesty is above challenge,” the merman said. “However, half asleep, he may well have imagined that that happened which he desired so much to happen.”

Meiiva shivered, not from cold. “Or else the dead man he invoked was playing a trick,” she said.

“No, I don’t ween the Most High would allow that. He is just.”

She gave him a startled glance. “Never erenow have you spoken thus.”

“We’ve none of us been wont to talk, or think, about such matters. They were beyond us, as the fashioning and use of a knife are beyond a dolphin. We knew only blind luck, which might be good or might be bad, save that in the end, soon or late, it was always fatal. God did not care about us . . . we supposed. . . and we had naught to do with Him.

“Today I wonder,” Vanimen said when they had laid several more yards behind them. He grinned as he used to when confronting a threat. “I’d better, hadn’t I?”

“Do you really hold that we should forsake Faerie?” Meiiva plucked at the gown, dun and itchy, which closed her off from a living world. “We had the freedom of the swan’s road.”

“I fear Pavle Subitj is right,” Vanimen answered heavily. “For the children if not ourselves, we should yield.”

“Will their lives be worth the cost? Man’s lot is seldom happy.”

“Our people can do well enough. Their swimming skills are in demand; they are liked; already, you must have noticed, mermen and maidens, mermaids and youths, begin to sigh for each other, and heads of households ponder the advantages of marriage alliances with persons of such excellent prospects.”

Meiiva nodded. “Indeed. The offspring of those unions will be more terrestrial than our kind. The next generation after them will be entirely human-drownable. We’ve witnessed this down the centuries, have we not? In one or two hundred years, the blood of Liri will be mingled unto evanishment, the memory of Liri be a myth that no sensible man believes.”

“Save in Heaven,” he reminded her.

A raven croaked.

“I wish—” he started to say, and stopped.

“What, dear?” Her fingers caressed his arm.

“I wish I were doing this because I truly want to be with God,” he got out. “I ought not come to Him as a pauper.”

“You, Vanimeq?” she whispered.

“Aye,” he said. They halted. She saw him square his shoulders inside the peasant’s coat. “Let me go first, so the rest of you may see what happens and thereafter choose for yourselves.

“I am your king.”

Father Petar was grossly offended that the ceremony would take place off in the woods, with Father Tomislav officiating. The zhupan must point out that this was at the Ban’s express command, because having many observers who often went to Shibenik or farther would be impolitic.

Having received religious instruction, Vanimen excused himself and went alone down to the coast. He spent the day and night of the equinox at sea. What he did or thought then was something whereof he later kept silence.

His return was on the eve of St. Gabriel. Next morning, after Mass had been sung, he entered the church. The inhabitants of the zadruga stayed there as onlookers. No image denied him. Outside, his people waited under budding leaves, in a hard rain.

He carne forth with arms widespread and cried in their own tongue: “Oh, hasten, hasten, beloved! Christ bids you welcome to blessedness!”

VI

Tauno and Eyjan reached Greenland months after leaving Denmark. First they had searched the nearer waters, albeit with scant expectation. Their tribe could only be living in those parts in dispersal, and that might well itself prove impossible. Everywhere from North Cape and the Gulf of Bothnia to the Galway coast and Faeroes, what few hunting grounds remained-not yet overrun by humans or barred by curse of a Christian priest-had long been held by others, who numbered about as many as could support themselves.

Though friendly enough to the siblings, these dwellers had no knowledge whatsoever of where the exiles might have gone. That was strange, as widely as news traveled with merfolk roving singly or in small bands, and with the dolphins. A few persons had heard of a migration up the Kattegat and across the Skagerrak, but there the trail ended.

Hence the siblings went on to Iceland, arriving about midwinter. They got no help from the three surviving settlements along yonder shores either, save hospitality during a season more stem than Tauno and Eyjan had known in their young lives. Elders who had seen several hundred years go by told them that through the past eight or nine decades cold had been deepening. Pack ice groaned in every fjord which once had been clear, and bergs laired in sea lanes which Eric the Red had freely sailed three centuries ago. .

But this was of no large moment to merfolk, who, indeed, found more life in chill than in warm waters. The king of Liri might well have led his community to unclaimed banks off Greenland. In spring, Tauno and Eyjan sought thither.

On the way, they encountered some dolphins who confirmed what they had suspected. Vanimen and his following had tak a ship westward from Norway. Alas, a mighty storm arose and blew the vessel farther off course than any of those animalswhose territories are large but nevertheless territories-Chose to go.

“If she foundered,” Tauno reasoned, “the sailors would be swimmers again. Where they made for would depend on where they were, but they’d strive toward the. goal they had if it seemed at all reachable. If she did not go under, then they’d beat back toward that same goal. As close as we ourselves are to Greenland, our chances are best if we continue.” Eyjan agreed.

They spent that summer on the eastern side, fruitlessly for their search. What gatherings of their father’s sort that they met were uncouth barbarians who had never heard the name of Liri-for merfolk had less occasion to make this crossing than the sons of Adam had had. When they came upon a group of Inuit, the halflings joined those in hope of some tidings.

At home they had barely gotten rumors of a new human breed moving southward through the great glacier-crowned island. Tauno and Eyjan found them to be hardy, skilled, helpful, openhanded, merrier companions and lustier lovers than most shoredwellers of Europe, heathens who felt no guilt at welcoming Faerie kind into their midst. But after a few months, their way of life, took on a sameness which chafed. Having learned somewhat of the language, and the fact that nobody had the longed-for information, brother and sister bade farewell and returned to the sea.

Southbound among early ice floes, they soon left behind them all trace of Inuit, who had not yet gotten that far down from the” north. Rounding the cape at the bottom of the island, the pair met dolphins who did bear a word to stir hearts-word of magic aprowl farther up the west coast. The dolphins could scarcely say more; yonder wasn’t their range, and what they got was mere gossip such as they loved to pass onward. Nor did they care to go look; the whisper went that this was a very dangerous sorcery.

It might simply appear to be so, Tauno and Eyjan decided. For instance, the founding of a New Liri could well frighten creatures who had never seen or dreamed of an underwater town. And, whatever was going on, they had a need to know about it more: nearly. ...

From humans back home to whom they had been close, they were aware of how matters stood ashore in Greenland. The Norse had three settlements on this side, where climate was less harsh than elsewhere. Oldest, biggest, and southernmost was the Eastern, the Ostri Bygd. Not far from it lay the Mid Bygd. A goodly way north, despite its name, was a later Western settlement, the Vestri Bygd. The tales of menace came out of that last.

Tauno and Eyjan swam toward it. The season was now well along into fall.

VII

An umiak was traveling with land to starboard, at the center of a school of kayaks. The merman’s children broached half a mile off, cleared their lungs, and poised where they were that they might take stock in safety. Shark, orca, storm, reef, riptide had winnowed faintheartedness out of their bloodline, but had also taught caution.

“Deeming by what the dolphins said, the... thing. . . hereabouts is a foe to white men,” Tauno reminded. “Thus, if the matter isn’t just that our kith have had to defend themselves against attack, it must be Inuit work. I’d as soon not get a harpoon in me because I’m taken for a white man.”

“Oh, nonsense!” Eyjan answered. “I’d never known folk can be as gentle as those who guested us.”

“A different set from these, sister mine. And I heard stories about murders done once in a while.”

“If naught else, they’ll see we can’t be of common earth. What we must avoid is not assault, but frightening them off. Let’s go ahead slowly, wearing our cheeriest faces.”

“And ready to plunge. Aye, then.”

Air-breathing, they slanted to intercept the convoy. They felt the frigidity of the water, but not in the torn and gnawed way that a mortal would; to them, it slid caressingly past every muscle, stoking warmth up within them, tasting not alone of salt but of countless subtler things, life and deeps and distances. Choppy, it rocked them as they went-whitecaps a thousand shades of blue black overlaid by a shimmer of green. It whooshed and gurgled; afar on the coast it roared. A west wind blew sharp-edged under a silver-gray sky where wrack flew like smoke. Gulls filled heaven with wings and cries. To right the land rose steeply, darkling cliffs, glimpses of autumn-yellowed meadows tucked in sheltered nooks, peaks where snow lay hoar, and beyond these a bleakbrightness that told of inland ice.

Their attention was mainly on thi( boats. Those within must have gone on some such errand as fowling, and be homebound; no Inuit dwelt quite as far south as the Norse. The umiak was a big canoe, leather across a framework of whalebone and driftwood, paddled by a score of women. As many kayaks accompanied it, each bearing its man. AIl the gang were merry; their shouts and laughter blew among the gulls’ mewings, the waves’ squelpings. Tauno and Eyjan saw one young fellow lay alongside the skin boat and speak to a woman who had to be his mother, nursing her newest babe: for she dropped her paddle, hoisted her jacket, and gave him a quick drink at her breast.

Another spied the swimmers. A yell awoke. Sword-blade-thin, the kayaks darted toward them.

“Keep behind me, Eyjan,” Tauno said. “Hold your spear under the surface ready to use.” He himself trod water, repeatedly lifting his hands to show they were empty. His thews thrummed.

The first kayak foamed to a stop before him. He inside could well-nigh have been a merman too, or rather a sea-centaur, so much did he and his craft belong together. The hide that covered it was laced around his sealskin-clad waist; he could capsize, right himself, and get never a drop on his boots. A double-ended paddle sent him over the waves like a skimming cormorant. A harpoon lay lightly secured before him; the inflated bladder bobbed around.

For several heartbeats, he and the halflings regarded each other. Tauno tried to peer past his astonishment and guage him as a man. He was youthful, even more powerfully built than most of his stocky brethren, handsome in a broad-featured, small-eyed, coarsely black-maned fashion. Beneath grease and soot, his complexion was of an almost ivory hue, and bore the barest trace of whiskers. He recovered fast, and surprised the siblings by asking in accented Norse, “You castaways? Need help?”

“No, I thank you, but we belong here,” Tauno replied. The Danish he knew was sufficiently close to the tongue of the colonists-closer, in fact, than to Hauau’s dialect-that he expected no trouble in understanding. He smiled, and rolled around to let the Inuk see him better.

In looks he might well have been a Norseman, long and thickmuscled, save for beardlessness, amber eyes, and the tinge of green in his shoulder-length hair. But no earth-born man could have rested at ease, naked off Greenland in fall. A headband, a belt to hold a pair of obsidian knives, and a narrow roll of oiled leather strapped to his shoulders beneath a spear whose head was of bone were his whole clothing.

Eyjan was likewise outfitted. She also smiled, and dazzled the Inuk.

“You. . . are—” A protracted native word followed. It seemed to mean “creatures of magic.”

“We are your friends,” Tauno said in that language; it was his turn to speak haltingly. He gave the names of his sister and himself.

“This person is called Minik,” the young man responded. He was emboldened, more than his companions, who hovered nervously farther off. “Will you not come aboard the umiak and rest?”

“No—” protested somebody else.

“They are not of the Neighbors,” Minik said.

Reluctant, the rest yielded. Such inhospitality was unheard of among their race. It could not be due to fear of wizardry. They did live in a world of spirits which must forever be appeased, but here were simply two manlike beings who made no threat and could surely relate wonders. Something terrible must have happened between them and the Vestri Bygd. And yet—

Eyjan noticed ftrst. “Tauno!” she exclaimed. “They’ve a white woman among them!”

He had been too alert to the harpoons to pay much heed to the boat he was approaching. Now he saw that about at its middle, staring dumfounded as the rest, knelt one who overtopped them; and above a thrown-back parka hood, her braids shone gold.

The merman’s children climbed over the side, careful not to upset the craft, more careful to squat in the bows prepared for a leap. The hull was ladend and bloody with a catch of auks. Tauno and Eyjan aimed their awareness at the single man there, a passenger in the stem, grizzled, wrinkled, and snag-toothed. He made signs at them, gasped, yelped, then grew abruptly calm and called out: “These bear no ills for us that I can smell.” And to them: “This person is called Panigpak and said by some to be an angakok”—a shaman, sorcerer, familiar of ghosts and demons, healer, foreseer, and, at need, wreaker of harm upon foes. For all his modesty, customary among his people, and for all the hriveling that age had brought upon him, he had an air of wildnimal pride; Tauno thought of wolf and white bear.

The women squealed and chattered; a few cackled half terrified aughter; their eyes darted like black beetles above the high, wide heekbones. There drifted from them a secnt of fleshly heat and, lot unpleasantly, of smoke and oil and the urine wherein they vashed their hair. The men crowded their own craft around. They leld themselves a bit more reserved-just a bit.

The Norsewoman alone kept still. She wore the same skin coat md trousers and footgear as the rest, she was as greasy as they, but her gaze burned blue. That, her fair and cleanly molded face, ler stature and slenderness, roused longings in Tauno which no nuk woman could altogether quell. He draped a hand between lis thighs to hide those thoughts, and took the word:

“Forgive how lamely somebody talks. We learned among a listant band of the People. With them we hunted, fished, feasted, swapped gifts, and became friends. Here we will not linger. We search for our family, and ask no more from you than whatever knowledge you may have of it.”

Wind blew, waves trundled, the boat swayed in shrill cold. I Jut it was as if the blond girl spoke through silence, in her birth- ongue: “Who are you? What are you? Not true merfolk. . . I think. Your feet are not webbed.”

“Then you know of our kind?” Eyjan cried gladly.

“Through tales I heard at the fireside, most from the old country. Naught else.”

Eyjan sighed. “Well, you are right about our nature. But see how you bewilder us, even as we bewilder you.”

The woman hugged to her an infant that, like most of her ellow paddlers, she had along. Hers was towheaded. “Can we ndeed talk freely?” she breathed.

A couple of men objected to this lingo they did not understand. “Here things not uncanny enough already? She answered them Dore handily than the halflings could have done. These swimmers could best use Danish. Was it not wisest to let them, so that they night explain swiftly and rightly? Afterward she would make clear what they had told. She appealed to Minik and Panigipak. The mgakok’s jet eyes probed at the strangers. After a while he agreed.

Minik was her man, Tauno realized. How had that happened?

“I, I bight Bengta Haakonsdatter,” she stammered. A pause, a clouding over. “I was Bengta Haakonsdatter. I am Atitak. And my daughter”-she held the one-year-old very close-“she was Hallfrid, but we call he! Aloqisaq for Minik’s grandmother, who died on a floe soon before we came to him.”

“Were you stolen away?” Eyjan asked low-voiced.

“No!” Bengta’s free hand snatched over the side, caught Minik’s shoulder, and clung fast. He flushed, embarrassed at a show the Inuit did not put on; but he let her hand upon him remain. “Tell me of yourselves,” she begged.

Eyjan shrugged. “My brother and I are half human,” she said, and went on to relate briefly what had happened. She finished in a tone not quite steady: “Have you heard aught of merfolk arriving?”

“No,” Bengta mumbled. “Though I may well not have, the way my life has gone of late.”

“Speak to your comrades, dear. Tell them merfolk are not their enemies. Rather, sea dwellers and air breathers together could do what neither alone is able to.”

The singing language went back and forth. Often Panigpak put a question straight to the halflings, aided at need by the Norsewoman. The facts emerged piecemeal. No, these Inuit knew nothing of any advent. However, they spent most of their time ashore, hunting, and seldom went far out at sea-never as far as the white men, who in days gone by had sailed beyond the horizon to fetch lumber (Bengta spoke of a place she called Markland) and were still wont to take their skiffs on recklessly long journeys in summer. (They huddled at home throughout the winter, which was when the Inuit traveled-by dog-hauled sleds, overland or across the ice along the coasts.) Hence they in the Bygd might have ken of happenings on some island of which poor ignorant people in kayaks could say naught. Were that so, surely Bengta’s father would know, he being the mightiest man in the settlement.

Tauno and Eyjan could not miss the horror wherewith the name of Haakon Amorsson was uttered. His own daughter flinched, and her voice harshened.

Just the same- “Well, we had better go to see him,” Eyjan murmured. “Shall we carry a message from you, Bengta?”

The girl’s will broke. Tears burst forth. “Bring him my curse!” she screamed. “Tell him... all of them. . . leave this land... before the tupilak dooms them. . . that our angakok put on them for his misdeeds!”

Minik clutched his harpoon. Panigpak crouched deeper, secretive, into his furs. Women and kayaks edged back from the two in the bows. Infants sensed unease and wailed. “I think we’d best get out of here,” Tauno said at the comer of his mouth. Eyjan nodded. In twin arcs, the merman’s children dived over the side of the umiak and vanished beneath restless bitter waters.

VIII

The talk had revealed where Haakon’s garth lay on the great bight that sheltered the Vestri Bygd. The short gray day had turned to dusk when the halflings found it. That gloom hid them while they donned the garb rolled into their packs. It would hardly disguise what they were. Instead of cloth, which dampness would soon have rotted, the stuff was three-ply fishskin, rainbow-scaled, from Liri. Though brief, those tunics would not offend Christians as badly as nakedness did. Out of waterproof envilopes they took steel knives; however, they did not lay aside their rustfree weapons of stone and bone, and they bore their spears in their hands.

Thereafter they walked to the steading. Wind whined sharptoothed; waves ground together the stones of the beach. Faerie sight brought more out of the murk than a human could see; but the view between hunchbacked hills was everywhere desolate. The settlement was not a town, it was homes scattered across many wild miles: for brief bleak summers made this land a niggard. Since grain often failed, grass, as pasture and hay for livestock, was the only crop the dwellers dared count on raising. Stubble, thin beneath their bare feet, told the wayfarers how scant the latest harvest had been. A paddock, fenced by bleached whale ribs, was large, must formerly have kept a fair number of beasts, but now held a few scrawny sheep and a couple of likewise wretched cows. A small inlet ended here, and three boats lay drawn aground. They were six-man skiffs, well-built, well suited to this country of countless winding fjords; but beneath the pungent tar that blackened them Tauno descried how old their timbers were.

Ahead loomed the buildings, a house, a barn, and two sheds ringing a dirt courtyard. They were of dry-laid rock, mosschinked, turf-decked, barely fit for the poorest fishermen in Denmark. Peat-fire smoke drifted out of a roofhole. Gleams trickled through cracks in warped ancient shutters. Four hounds bounded clamorous from the door. They were big animals, wolf blood in them, and their leanness made them appear twice frightful. But when they caught the scent of the halflings, they tucked down their tails and slunk aside.

The door opened. A tall man stood outlined black between the posts, a spear of his own at the ready. Several more gathered at his back. “Who comes?” he called distrustfully.

“Two of us,” Tauno answered from the dark. “Fear not if we look eerie. Our will toward you is good.”

A gasp arose as he and Eyjan stepped into the fireglow. oaths, maybe a hurried prayer. The tall man crossed himself. “In Jesu name, say what you are,” he demanded, shaken but undaunted.—

“We are not mortals,” Eyjan told him. The admission always scared less when it came from her sweetly curved lips. “Yet we can speak the name of Jesu Kristi as well as you, and mean no harm. We may even help, in return for an easy favor we hope you can grant us.”

The man drew a loud breath, sank his weapon, and trod for- ward. He was as gaunt as his dogs, and had never been stout; but: his hands were large and strong. His face was thin too, in cheeks, straight nose, tightly held mouth, plowshare chin, faded blue eyes, framed by gray hair and cropped gray beard. Beneath a long, plain woolen coat with hood thrown back could be seen stockings and sealskin shoon; nothing smelled well. A sword, which he must have belted on when he heard the noise, hung at his waist. To judge from the shape, it had been forged for a viking. Were they truly that backward here, or could they afford nothing new?

“Will you give us your names too, and name your tribe?” he ordered more than asked. Defiantly: “I am Haakon Arnorsson, and this is my steading Ulfsgaard.”

“We knew that,” Eyjan said, “since we inquired who the chief man is in these parts.” In about the same words as she had used to his daughter, she told of the quest up to yesterday-save for merely relating that Liri had become barren, not that the cause of the flight there from was an exorcism. Meanwhile the men of the household got courage to shuffle nigh, and the women and children to jam the doorway. Most were younger than Haakon, and stunted by a lifetime of ill feeding; some hobbled on bowed legs or in unmistakable pain from rheumatism and deformed bones. The night made them shiver in their patched garments. A stench welled from the house which the eye-smarting smoke could not altogether blanket, sourness of bathless bodies that must live packed in a narrow space.

“Can you tell us anything?” Eyjan finished. “ ‘Ye will pay. . . not gold off these rings of ours, unless you wish it, but more fish and sea-game than I think you’d catch for yourselves.”

Haakon brooded. The wind moaned, the folk whispered and made signs in the air, not all of the Cross. At last he flung his head on high and snapped: “Where did you learn of me? From the Skraelings, no?”

“The what?”

“The Skraelings. Our ugly, stumpy heathen, who’ve been drifting into Greenland from the west these past hundred years.” A snarl: “Drifting in together with frosty summers, smitten fields, God’s curse on us-that I think their own warlocks brought down!”

Tauno braced muscles and mind. “Aye,” he answered. “We met a party of them, and your daughter Bengta, Haakon. Will you trade your knowledge for news of how she is?”

An outcry lifted. Haakon showed teeth in his beard and sucked air in between them. Then he stamped spearbutt on earth and roared, “Enough! Be still, you whelps!” When he had his silence, he said quietly, “Come within and we’ll talk.” Eyjan plucked Tauno’s elbow. “Should we?” she questioned in the mer-language. “Outdoors, we can escape from an onset. Between walls, they can trap us.”

“A needful risk,” her brother decided. To Haakon: “Do you bid us be your guests? Will you hold us peace-holy while we are beneath your roof?” Haakon traced the Cross. “By God and St. Olaf I swear that, if you plight your own harmlessness.”

“On our honor, we do,” they said, the nearest thing to an oath that Faerie folk knew. They had found that Christians took it as mockery if soulless beings like them called on the sacred.

Haakon led them over his threshold. Eyjan well-nigh gagged at the full stink, and Tauno wrinkled his nose. The Inuit were not dainty, but the ripeness in their quarters betokened health and abundance. Here—

A miserly peat fife, in a pit on the clay floor, gave the sole light until Haakon commanded that a few soapstone lamps be filled with blubber and kindled. Thereafter his poverty became clear. The house had but a single room. People had been readying for sleep; straw pallets were spread on the platform benches which lined the walls, in a shut-bed that must ,be the master’s, and on the ground for the lowly. The entire number was about thirty. So must they lie among each other’s snores, after listening to whatever hasty lovemaking any couple had strength for. An end of the chamber held a rude kitchen. Smoked meat and stockfish hung from the rafters, flatbread on poles in between, and were gruesomely little when the wind was blowing winter in.

And yet their forebears had not been badly off. There was a high seat for lord and lady, richly carved though the paint was gone, that had doubtless come from Norway. Above it gleamed a crucifix of gilt bronze. Well-wrought cedar chests stood about. However rotted and smoke-stained, tapestries had once been beautiful. Weapons and tools racked between them remained good to see. It was all more than these few dwellers could use. Tauno whispered to Eyjan, “I reckon the family and retainers used to live in a better house, a real hall, but moved out when it got too hard to keep warm for a handful, and built this hovel.”

She nodded. “Aye. They’d not have used the lamps tonight, had we not come. I think they keep the fat against a famine they await.” She shivered. “Hu, a lightless Greenland winter! Drowned Averorn was more blithe.”

Haakon took the high seat and, with manners elsewhere long out of date, beckoned his visitors to sit on the bench opposite. He ordered beer brought. It was weak and sour, but came in silver goblets. He explained he was a widower. (From her behavior toward him, they guessed the child was his which bulged the belly of a young slattern.) Three sons and a daughter were alive-he believed; the oldest lad had gotten a berth on a ship bound back to Oslo, and not been heard of for years. The second was married and on a small farm. The third, Jonas, was still here, a wiry pointy-nosed youth with lank pale hair who regarded Tauno in fox wariness and Eyjan in ill-hidden lust. The rest were poor kin and hirelings, who worked for room and board.

“As for my daughter—”

Bodies stirred and mumbled among thick, moving shadows. Eyes gleamed white, fear could be smelled and felt in the smoke. Haakon’s voice, which had been firm, barked forth: “What can you tell of her?”

“What can you tell of merfolk?” Tauno retorted.

The Norseman curbed his wits. “Something. . . maybe.”

It gasped and choked through the dimness. “I doubt that,” Eyjan breathed in her brother’s ear. “I think he lies.”

“I fear you’re right,” he answered as low. “But let’s play his game. We’ve a mystery here.”

Aloud: “We found her at sea, not far hence, amidst Inuit-Skraelings, do you call them? She and her baby looked well.” They looked better than anybody here, he thought. Belike Haakon had seen to it that she got ample food while growing, because he wanted her to bear him strong grandsons or because he loved her. “I warn you, though, you’ll not like what she told us to tell you. Bear in mind, this was none of our doing. We were on hand for a very brief time, and we don’t even understand what she meant by her words.”

The father’s knuckles stood white around his swordhilt. Jonas his son, seated on the bench next to him, likewise grasped dagger.

“Well?” Haakon snapped.

“I am sorry. She cursed you. She said everybody should depart this country, lest you die of a—a tupilak, whatever that is—which a magician of theirs has made to punish a sin of yours.”

Jonas sprang to his feet. “Have they taken her soul out of the body they took?” he shrieked through a hubbub.

Did Haakon groan? He gave no other sign of his wound. “Be still!” he required. The uproar waxed. He rose, drew his sword, brandished it and said flatly: “Sit down. Hold your mouths. Whoever does not will soon be one less to feed through the winter.”

Quiet fell, save for the wind piping around walls and snuffing at the door. Haakon sheathed blade and lowered his spare frame. “I have an offer for you two,” he said, word by word. “A fair trade. You’ve told us you’re half human, but can breathe underwater as well as a real merman, and swim almost as well. By your weapons, I ween you can fight there too.”

Tauno nodded.

“And you ought not to fear sorcery, being of the Outworld yourselves,” Haakon went on.

Eyjan stiffened. Jonas said in haste, “Oh, he doesn’t mean you are evil.”

“No,” Haakon agreed. “In truth, I’ve a bargain to strike with you.” He leaned forward. “See here. There is indeed. . . a flock of what must be merfolk. . . around an island to the west. I saw them shortly before, before our woes began. I was out fishing. Sturli and Mikkel were along,” he added to the astounded household, “but you remember that the tupilak got them afterward. We were. . . alarmed at what we saw, unsure what Christian men should do, and felt we’d best hold our peace till we could ask a priest. I mean a wise priest, not Sira Sigurd of this parish, who can’t read a line and who garbles the Mass. I know he does; I’ve been to church in the Ostri Bygd and heeded what was done and sung. And surely he’s failed to pray us free of the tupilak. Folk around here are sliding fast into ignorance, cut off as we mostly have been—” His features writhed. .. Aye, sliding into heathendom.”

He needed a minute to regain his calm. “Well,” he said. “We meant to seek counsel from the bishop at Gardar, and meanwhile keep still about the sight lest we stampede somebody into foolishness or worse. But then the tupilak came, and we—I never had the chance to go.” He caught the eyes of his guests. “Of course, I can’t swear those beings are your kin. But they are latecomers, so it seems reasonable, no? I doubt you could find the island by yourselves. The waters are vast between here and Markland. You’d at least have a long, perilous search, twice perilous because of the tupilak. I can steer by stars and sunstone and take you straight there. But. . . none from the Vestri Bygd can put to sea and live, unless the tupilak be destroyed.”

“Tell us,” Eyjan urged from the bottom of her throat.

Haakon sat back, tossed off his beer, signaled for more all around, and spoke rapidly:

“Best I begin at the beginning. The beginning, when men first found and settled Greenland. They went farther on in those daysfailed to abide in Vinland, good though that was said to be, but for a long time afterward would voyage to Markland and fetch timber for this nearly treeless country of ours. And each year ships came from abroad to barter iron and linen and such-like wares for our skins, furs, eiderdown, whalebone, walrus ivory, narwhal tusk—”

Tauno could not entirely quench a grin. He had seen that last sold in Europe as a unicorn’s horn.

Haakon frowned but continued: “We Greenlanders were never wealthy, but we flourished, our numbers waxed, until the landhungry moved north and started this third of our settlements. But then the weather worsened, slowly at first, afterward ever fastersummer’s cold and autumn’s hail letting us garner scant harvest any more; storms, fogs, and icebergs at sea. Fewer and fewer ships arrived, because of the danger and because of upheavals at home. Now years may well go by between two cargoes from outside. Without that which we must have to live and work, and cannot win from our home-acres, we grow more poor, more backward, less able to cope. And. . . the Skraelings are moving in.”

“They’re peaceful, are they not?” Eyjan asked softly.

Haakon spat an oath, Jonas onto the floor. “They’re troll-sly,” the older one growled. “By their witchcraft they can live where Christians cannot; but it brings God’s anger down on Greenland.”

“How can you speak well of a breed so hideous, a lovely girl like you?” Jonas added. He tried a smile in her direction.

Haakon’s palm chopped the air. “As for my house,” he said, “the tale is quickly told. For twenty-odd years, a Skraeling pack has camped, hunted, and fished a short ways north of the Bygd. They would come to trade with us, and Norsemen would less often visit them. I thought ill of this, but had no way to forbid it, when they offered what we needed. Yet they were luring our folk into sin-foremost our young men, for their women have no shame, will spread legs for anybody with their husbands’ knowledge and consent. . . and some youths also sought to learn Skraeling tricks of the chase, Skraeling arts like making huts of snow and training dogs to pull sleds—”

Pain sawed in his tone: “Four years ago, I married my daughter off to Sven Egilsson. He was a likely lad, and they-abode happily together, I suppose, though his holding was meager, out at the very edge of the Bygd, closer to Skraelings than to any but one or two Christian families. They had two children who lived, a boy and girl, and a carl to help with the work.

“Last summer, want smote us in earnest. Hay harvest failed, we must butcher most of our livestock, and nevertheless would have starved save for what we could draw from the sea. A frightful winter followed. Mter a blizzard which raged for days—no, for an ungues sable part of the nearly sunless night which is winter here—I could not but lead men north to see how Bengta fared. We found Sven, my grandson Dag, and the carl dead, under skimpy cairns, for the earth was frozen too hard to dig a grave in. Bengta and little Hallfrid were gone. The place was bare of fuel. Traces-sled tracks, dog droppings-bespoke a Skraeling who had come and taken them. ,

“Mad with grief and wrath, I led my men to the stone huts where those creatures den in winter. We found most were away, hunting, gadding about, I know not what. Bengta too. Those who were left said she had come of her free will, bringing her live child-come with a male of theirs, come to his vile couch, though he already had a mate- We slaughtered them. We spared a single crone to pass word that in spring we’d hunt down the rest like the vermin they are, did they not return our stolen girls.”

Shadows closed in as the fife waned. Dank chill gnawed and gnawed. Eyjan asked mutedly, into Haakon’s labored breathing:

“Did you never think they might have spoken truth? There were no marks of violence on the bodies, were there? I’d say hunger and cold, when supplies gave out, were the murderers, or else an illness such as your sort brings on itself by living in filth. Then Minik—the Inuk, the man-he went yonder, anxious about her, and she took refuge with him. I daresay they’d long been friends.”

“Aye,” Haakon confessed. “She was ever much taken by the Skraelings, prattled words of theirs as early as she did Norse, hearkened to their tales when they came here, the dear, trusting lass. . . . Well, he could have brought her to me, couldn’t he? I’d have rewarded him. No, he must have borne her off by might. Later-what you heard in the boat is proof-that damned old witch-man cast a spell on her. God have mercy! She’s as lost and enwebbed as any traveler lured into an elthill-lost from her kin, lost from her salvation, she and my granddaughter both-unless we can regain them—”

“What happened next?” Tauno asked in a while.

“They abandoned that ground, of course, and shifted to somewhere else in the wilderness. Early this spring, hunters of ours came on one of theirs and fetched him bound to me. I hung him over a slow fife to make him tell where they were, but he would not. So I let him go free-save for an eye, to prove I meant what I said—and bade him tell them that unless they sent me my daughter and granddaughter, and for my justice the nithings who defiled her, no man in the Bygd will rest until every last troll of them is slain; for all of us have women to ward. “A few days afterward, the tupilak came.”

“And what is that?” Tauno wondered. His spine prickled.

Haakon grimaced. “When she was a child, Bengta passed on to me a story about a tupilak that she had from the Skraelings. I thought it was a mere bogy tale that might give her nightmares. Then she consoled me and promised not. Oh, she was the most loving daughter a man could have, until—

“Well. A tupilak is a sea monster made by witchcraft. The warlock builds a frame, stretches a walrus hide across, stuffs the whole with hay and sews it up, adds fangs and claws and—and sings over it. Then it moves, seeks the water, preys on his enemies. This tupilak attacks white men. It staves in a skiff, or capsizes it, or crawls over the side. Spears, arrows, axes, nothing avails against a thing that has no blood, that is not really alive. It eats the crew. . . . What few escaped bear witness.

“This whole summer, we’ve been forbidden the sea. We cannot fish, seal, fowl and gather eggs on the rookery islands; we cannot send word to the Ostri Bygd for help. Men set out overland. We’ve heard naught. Maybe the Skraelings got them, though like as not, they simply lost their way and starved in that gashed and frozen desert. The southerners are used to not hearing from us for long at a time; in any case, they have troubles of their own; and if they did send a boat or two, the tupilak waylaid those.

“We’ve barely stocks on hand to last out the winter. But next year we die.”

“Or you go away,” Tauno said into his anguish. “Now I see what Bengta meant. You must leave, seek new homes to southward. I suppose the angakok will call off his beast if you do.”

“We’ll be go-betweens if you wish,” Eyjan offered.

Some of the men cursed, some shouted. Jonas drew his knife. Haakon sat as though carved in flint, and stated: “No. Here are our homes. Our memories, our buried fathers, our freedom They’re not much better off in the south than we are here; they can take us in; but only as hirelings, miserably poor. No, I say. We’ll harry the Skraelings instead till they are gone.”

Once more he leaned forward, left fist clenched on knee, right hand raised crook-fingered like the talons of a Greenland falcon. “Thus we arrive at my bargain,” he told the merman’s children. “Let us take the boats out tomorrow. The tupilak will know, and come. While we fight it from the hulls, you attack from beneath. It can be slain-cut to pieces, at least. That story Bengta heard was of how a valiant man got rid of a tupilak. He invented the kayak, you see, to capsize on purpose and get at the thing’s underside. Belike that’s an old wives’ tale in itself. Anyhow, no man of us has skill with those piddleboats. Still, it shows what the Skraelings believe is possible, and they ought to know; right?

“Help free us from our demon, and I’ll guide you to your people. Otherwise”-Haakon smiled stiffly—“I’d not be surprised if the creature took you for Norse and slew you. You are half of our breed. Be true to your race, and we will be true to you.”

Again was a windy hush. Tauno and Eyjan exchanged a look. “No,” said the brother.

“What?” burst from Haakon. He tried to jeer: “Are you afraid? When you’d have allies? Then flee these waters at dawn.”

“I think you lie to us,” Tauno said. “Not about your bloodiness toward the Inuit, nor about their revenge, no—but about those merfolk. It rings false.”

“I watched faces,” Eyjan put in. “Your own following doesn’t swallow that yarn.”

Jonas grabbed at his dagger. “Do you call my father a liar?”

“I call him a desperate man,” Tauno said. “However”-he pointed to the crucifix above the high seat- “take that sign of your God between both hands, Haakon Amorsson. Kiss your God on the lips, and swear by your hope of going to Him after you die, that you have spoken entire truth to us, your guests. Then we will fare beside you.”

Haakon sat. He stared.

Eyjan rose. “Best wc go, Tauno,” she sighed. “Goodfolk, we’re sorry. But why should we risk our lives for nothing, in a quarrel not ours and unjust to boot? I rede you to do what Bengta said, and leave this land of ill weird.”

Haakon leaped erect. His sword blazed forth. “Seize them!” he shouted.

Tauno’a knife sprang free. The sword whirred down and struck it from his grasp. Women and children screamed. But from fear of what might happen if the halflings escaped, the men boiled against them.

Two clung to either arm of Tauno, two to either leg. He banged them around. A club struck his head. He roared. The club thudded twice, thrice. Agony and shooting stars flashed across his world. He crumpled. Between raggedy-clad calves he glimpsed Eyjan. She had her back to the wall. Spears hemmed her in, the sword hovered aloft, Jonas laid steel at her throat. Tauno fell into nothingness.

IX

Day broke as a sullen red glimmer through clouds, a steel sheen on the murk and chop of the fjord. Wind blew whetted. Tauno wondered if the wind was always keening around this place. He awoke on the straw where he had been laid out, to see Haakon towering above him as a shadow. “Up!” called the chieftain, and men grumbled about in the house-dark, babies wailed, older children whimpered.

“Are you well?” Eyjan asked from across the room. Like him, she had spent the night on the floor, wrists and ankles bound, neck leashed to a roofpost.

“Stiff,” he said. After hours of sleep, his temples no longer throbbed as when first he regained awareness. Blood clotted his hair, though, thirst his mouth. “You, my sister?”

Her chuckle came hoarse. “Well, that Jonas lout crawled by ere dawn to fumble at me, then dared not untie my legs. I could have made do, but it was a sort of fun to pretend I couldn’t. Shall I tell the rest?” They were using their father’s language.

“Not unless you do want him upon you, and belike more than him. We’re soulless-animals-to be used however men see fitremember?”

Haakon had come near saying as much when he had them secured: “Never would I have laid hand on any human whom I’d declared a guest, not even a Skraeling. But you aren’t. Does a man break faith when he butchers a sheep he’s kept? My sin would be not to force you, for tpe saving of my people.” He added: “Tomorrow you’ll help us fight the tupilak, Tauno. Eyjan stays behind, hostage. If you win, you both go free. That oath I will give you upon the Cross.”

“Can we nonetheless believe a traitor?” she snarled.

His mouth twisted upward. “What choice have you?”

This morning he had men stand around, clad in shirt and breeks, weapons bared, while he released Tauno. The halfling rose, flexed the cramp out of his limbs, went to Eyjan and kissed her. Jonas shifted from foot to foot. “Well,” the youth said around a mouthful of cheese and hardtack, “well, let’s away and get the thing done.”

Tauno shook his head. “First, food and water for my sister and me. As much as we need, too.”

Haakon frowned. “Best to eat lightly, or not at all, before battle.”

“Not for beings like us.”

A middle-aged, brown-haired man, who hight Steinkil, guffawed. “Right. Haakon, you know how seals gorge.”

The leader shrugged. He must struggle to hold back dismay when he saw what pounds of meat his captives put down. At the end, he snapped. “Now will you come?” and stalked for the door.

“A little span yet,” Tauno said.

Haakon wheeled about. “Have you forgotten what you are, here?”

Tauno gave him stare for stare. “Have you forgotten what captaincy is . . . even here?”

Then the Liri prince knelt by his sister, took her in his arms, and murmured into the fresh fragrances of her hair and flesh, “Eyjan, mine is the better luck. If I die, it will be cleanly. Youthey’re women, brats, and oldsters who’ll guard you. Can’t you play on their fears, or trick them somehow, and-?”

“I’ll try,” she answered. “But oh, Tauno, I’ll think of you the whole while! If only we went together this day!”

They looked into each other’s eyes as they voiced the “Song of Farewells”:

He kissed her again, and she him. He got up and went outside.

Eleven ablebodied men and lads came along. They could handle two of the three skiffs that Haakon had from of old. Jonas had wanted to send for more from neighboring farms. “If we fail and perish,” he said, “this house is stripped of strength.”

Haakon denied him: “If we fail, everybody will perish. A fleet of boats could not overcome the tupilak. That was tried, you know. Three got away while it was wrecking the rest. Our main hope this time is our merman, and he’s single. Also”-for an instant, glory flickered through his starkness-“I bear the name of king’s reeve for this shire, not to risk lives but to ward them. Let us win as we are, and we will live in sagas as long as men live in Greenland.”

While the hulls were launched, Tauno stripped and bathed. He would not get weapons until the onslaught came. Most of the crew dreaded him too much, nearly as much as they did the monster. Well had they struck him down and bound him, but he stayed eldritch, and maybe no will less unbendable than Haakon’s could have made them venture forth in his company.

Silent, they took their seats. Oars creaked in tholes, splashed in water, which clucked back against planks and made the skiffs pitch. Spindrift spread salt on lips. Meadows of home fell away aft; the fjord broadened, dark and foam-streaked, between sheer cliffs. Against the overcast wheeled a flock of black guillemot. Their cries were lost in the sinister singing of wind. The sun was a dull and heatless wheel, barely above the mountains; it was as if cold radiated from their snows and the glacier beyond.

Each man had an oar, Tauno also. He sat by Haakon in the bows. Before him were Jonas and Steinkil; the remaining pair in this craft were grubby drawfs whose names he did not know or care about. The second boat paced them, several fathoms to starboard. He leaned into his work, glad of the chance to limber and warm up, dismal though the task was. Erelong Haakon said, “Go easier, Tauno. You’re outpulling us.”

“Strong as a bear, ha?” Steinkil flung over his shoulder. “Well, could be I’d liefer have a bear aboard.”

“Tease him not,” said Jonas unexpectedly. “Tauno, I. . . I’m sorry. Believe we’ll keep troth with you. My father is a man of honor. I try to be.”

“As with my sister last night?” gibed the halfling.

Haakon missed a stroke. “What’s this?”

Jonas cast Tauno a pleading glance. The latter took swift thought and said, “Oh, anybody could see how he hankered.” He felt no real anger at the attempted ravishment. Such matters meant little to him or Eyjan; if she’d had fewer partners than he, it was because she was two years younger; she knew the small spell that kept her from conceiving against her wish. He himself would happily tumble Jonas’ sister Bengta, should that unlikely chance come—the more so when he and his own sister had had ever worse trouble holding back from each other on their long journey, for the sake of their mother who had abhorred that. . . . Besides, they could lose naught by his making the younker look pitifully grateful.

“Mortal sin,” Haakon growled. “Put that desire from you, boy. Confess and-ask lax Sira Sigurd to set you a real penance.”

“Blame him not,” Steinkil urged. “She’s the fairest sight I’ve ever seen, and brazenly clad.”

“A vessel of Hell.” Haakon’s words came ragged. “Beware, beware. We’re losing our Faith in our loneliness. I shudder to think where our descendants will end, unless we- When we’ve finished with the tupilak-when we have, I say—I will go after my daughter What made her do it?” he almost screamed. “Forsake God-her blood, her kind-aye, a house around her, woven clothes on her back, white man’s food and drink and tools and ways, everything we’ve fought through lifetimes to keepplay whore to the wild man who violated her, huddle in a snow hut and devour raw meat- What power of Satan could make her do it?”

He saw how they stared from the other skiff, clamped his lips, and rowed.

They had been an hour under way, and begun to hear thunder where open sea surfed on headlands, when their enemy found them.

A man in the next boat howled. Tauno saw foam around a huge brown bulk. It struck yonder hull, which boomed and lurched. “Fend it off!” Haakon bellowed. “Use your spears! Pull, you cravens! Get us over there!”

He and Tauno shipped their oars and crouched on their feet. The halfling reached low, took from the bilge a belt bearing three sheath knives which he had asked for, and buckled it on. Not yet did he go overboard. He watched what they neared, his eyesight gone diamond sharp, ears keen to every splash and bang and curse and prayer, nostrils drinking deep of the wind to feed lungs and slugging heart. His will shrank at what he saw, until Eyjan’s image made him rally.

The tupilak had hooked a flipper, whereon were a bear’s claws, across a rail. Its weight was less than a live animal’s, but the boat was still canted so that men must struggle to keep afoot and aboard. Two shafts were stuck in the wrinkled hide—they wagged in horrible foolishness—and the broken halves of two more from earlier combats. No blood ran thence. At the end of a long, whipping neck, the head of a shark gaped and glassily glared. The limb jerked, the boat rocked, a man fell against the jaws, they sheared. Now blood spurted and bowels trailed. The wind blew away the steam off their warmth.

A rower aft in Haakon’s boat yammered his terror. Steinkil leaned to cuff him, then doggedly returned to his oar. They closed from behind. Haakon braced his legs wide and hacked with a bill. Tauno knew he sought to tear the walrus skin, let out the stuffing of hay and rotten corpses—

The flukes of a killer whale lashed back, up from roiled water, down on the prow. Wood splintered. Haakon tumbled. Tauno dived.

He needed a split minute to empty his lungs, let in the brine, and change his body over to undersea breathing. The icy green currents around him dimmed and shortened vision-he saw churned chaos above and ahead-battle clamor crashed blow after blow on his eardrums. The currents were tainted by the iron smell and taste of human gore. The dead man sank past, slowly twirling on his way to the eels.

“We’ll Keep the thing busy as long as we can, while you hit from below,” Haakon had said. “That won’t be very long.”

Ready, Tauno gripped a blade between his teeth and surged forward. Attacking, he lost both fear and self. There was no Tauno, no tupilak, no band of men; there was a fight.

The hulls were shadows, breaking and re-forming, on the splintery bright ceiling of his green world. Clearer was the tupilak, the curve of its paunch. . . he saw how thongs stitched it together, he caught an ooze of mildew and moldered flesh. Claws scythed on the rear flippers. Tauno swooped inward.

The knife was now in his. hand. His legs drove him past as he cut. A long gap in the seam followed the blade. He swung beyond reach of a foot that swatted at him.

Arcing back in a stream of bubbles, he saw some bones of sailors drop out. Mindless, the tupilak raged yet against the Norse.

He glimpsed how the tail battered, and the noise shook him. In again-hold underwater breath against graveyard foulness, slice away from the seam, grab that comer, heave the flap of skin wide—a slash caught him along the ribs, he lost his knife, he barely kicked free.

The beast sounded. The shark snout turned about in search. Paddles and tail sent the gross form toward him. He thought fleetingly that had those been Inuit in the boats, they’d have known to sink many harpoons in the body, trailing bladders to hamper it. Well, at best the man-eater was slow and awkward. He could swim rings around it. To get close, however, was. . . something that must be done.

The maw flapped hollow about a skeleton that, yes, seemed to be coming apart here and there. But feet and tail still drove, jaws still clashed. Tauno got onto the back, where nothing could reach him. He clamped thighs tight, though barnacles chewed them. He drew a second blade, and worked.

He could not reach clear around that bulk. But when he let go, the tail threshed feebly, half severed. Dizziness passed in dark rags before his eyes. He must withdraw for a short rest.

Did a dim knowledge stir in the tupilak, or was it driven to fulfill the curse? It lumbered back to the boats.

If it sank those, whether or not it outlasted them, would Eyjan’s captors ever let her go? He heard the mass ram on strakes, and rose for a look through air.

The second skiff drifted awash, helpless till the four crewmen left could bailout the hull and retrieve their floating oars. The tupilak struck again and again on Haakon’s vessel, whose stem was broken and whose planks were being torn free of the ribs. Neck and head reached in after prey. Where was the sheriff? His son Jonas hewed bravely with an ax-likewise, beside him, Steinkil. As Tauno watched, Steinkil stumbled into the teeth. They shut. Blood geysered. He reeled back, clasping the wrist where his right hand had been.

Haakon stood forth. He must have been knocked out. Crimson smeared his own face and breast, the last bright hue under wolfgray heaven. Somehow he spied Tauno, yards away. “Do you want help, merman?” he shouted.

From under a thwart, he lifted the boat’s anchor, woodenshanked but with ring, stock, and flukes of iron from former days, made fast by a leather cable to what remained of the stempost. Jonas had drawn back when Steinkil was crippled. The other two. cowered behind him. Haakon staggered aft. The jagged mouth yawned ready. He brought the anchor on high, crashed it down. A fluke put out the right eye and caught in the socket.

The jaws had him. Riven, he pul\ed free. “Men, swim!” he cried. “Tauno, take the beast—” He crumpled.

The halfling had strength back, and arrowed forward. Reckless of claws, he ripped. On the edge of sight, he saw Haakon’s crew go into the bay. The tupilak did not give chase. Tauno was harming it too much.

It plunged when he did, seeking to seize him. But a Greenland skiff dragged behind. Hardly more could it move than if the sea had frozen around it.

Tauno’s knives bit. Each piece that he cut away returned to the death whence the angakok had raised it.

Finally an empty hide floated and a shark’s head sank down into darkness. The waves cleansed themselves. When Tauno, airbreathing, reached the second boat, he felt the wind on his brow like an austere benediction.

Though now made useable again, the craft was not for him to board safely. Nine men were already an overload in a hull so splintered and sprung-nine, for by use of flotsam, both Haakon and Steinkil had been brought across. Tauno hung on the rail. The hale looked dazedly at him, drained of everything save awe. Steinkil’s bandaged stump looked as though he would live. Haakon would not. From breastbone to manhood, he was flayed open. His long frame sprawled in blood and entrails between two thwarts.

Yet he clung to wakefulness. His eyes and Tauno’s met, dimming blue on hot amber. The Liri prince could just catch a harsh whisper: “Merman, I thank you... Honor my oath, Jonas. . . . Merman, forgive me my lie about your people.”

“You had yours to think of,” Tauno said gently.

“And my daughter. . . . She’ll speak to you. . . . I’ve no right to beg. . . but will you find her and—” Haakon strove for breath. “Beseech her—but if she won’t, tell her I. . . I never disowned my Bengta. . . and in Purgatory I’ll pray for her—”

“Yes,” Tauno said, “Eyjan and I will do that.”

Haakon smiled. “Maybe you do have souls, you merfolk.”

Soon afterward he died.

X

Faerie senses found spoor that mortals could never. Tauno and Eyjan cast about for a mere brace of days—though they did travel too through most of the enormous late-autumn nights-before they discovered the Inuit’s new camp.

That was in a valley, small and snug above a high-walled bight. From the meadow a trail wound down toward the glimpsed gleam of water. A fresh spring bubbled out of turf gone sere but still soft underfoot. Dwarf birch and willow stood scattered, clinging to a last few yellow leaves. Elsewhere reared mountains, grayblue where snow did not lie. Through an eastward cleft flashed a mysterious green off the inland ice. A haloed westering sun slanted rays through air brilliant, breathless, and boreal.

Dogs bayed when the two big figures in fishskin tunics strode nigh, then caught the scent and quieted; they did not cringe like white men’s hounds. Hunters came out bearing harpoons, knives, or bows; they did not bluster. Women stayed at their tasks, bidding children stay close by; they did not voice fear or hatred.

Everybody seemed to be at home, enjoying the spoils of a chase that had gone well. Over fire, meat of both seal and bear made savory smoke. More was hung on poles for safety; the larger hides were being scraped clean; women had begun chewing on the smaller to supple them. While stone huts were there against winter, as yet families used their conical tents. Passing by one of these, the newcomers saw a half-completed piece of work, a carving in ivory of a musk ox. It was exquisite.

They raised palms and called, “Peace! Remember us from the umiak. We are your friends.”

Weapons sank or fell to earth. Bengta’s man took the word: “We could not see you well. The sun dazzled us. Somebody is ashamed.” She herself hastened forth to meet the siblings. “You won’t betray us to the Norse, will you?” she pleaded in that tongue.

“No, Tauno said. “We do bear a t;nessage from them.”

“And hard news for you, dear,” Eyjan added. She caught both Bengta’s hands. “Your father is dead. The tupilak got him as he and Tauno fought it. But he is avenged, the monster is slain, and before he went, he blessed you.”

“O-o-oh—” The girl stood moveless for a space. Her breath fogged the crackling cold, till it lost itself in a sky the color of her eyes. Smoke had dulled her hair, which she wore now in a knot, Inuit fashion. But she stood straight and healthy, in furs a queen might covet. “Oh, Father, I never dreamed—” She wept. Eyjan hugged and comforted her.

Minik had followed the talk. Clumsily, he patted her shoulder. “Excuse her,” he said in his own speech. “She is . . . not as well versed in right ways. . . as one hopes she will become in due course. Kuyapikasit, my first wife, will make food and roll out bedding for you.” He smiled, shy through sorrow on her behalf.

Panigpak the angakok came likewise from the ring of staring folk. Trouble touched his worn features. “Somebody thinks he heard something about a tupilak,” he forced out. However Tauno loomed above him, his gaze and his stance were steady.

“You heard aright,” the halfling replied. He and Eyjan had worked out beforehand what to say in the Inuit. Thus he told of the battle in swift strokes of speech.

The people buzzed their horror. Panigpak was worst hit. “I am a fool,” he groaned. “I brought that danger on you, who never harmed us.”

“Who could have foreseen?” Tauno consoled. “And, hark, there is more.

“When we returned, Jonas Haakonsson sent his carls to summon the men of the Vestri Bygd to a Thing, a meeting where decisions are made. My sister-he listened to her, and spoke as she counseled him. The rest listened to me. We frightened them, you understand, although they did suppose we had been sent for their rescue by the Great Nature.” That was as close as Inuit could come to “God.”

Tauno went on: “We soon saw that little but the masterfulness of Haakon had kept them where they are. They heeded our waming, what wise sea dwellers had told us, that this land will grow less and less fit for them until those who remain must starve.

“They voted to depart for the south. The lot of them. First they need to be sure nothing will set on their boats. That is my sister’s errand and mine-to get your promise of safe passage come summer. Thereafter the whole north country is yours.”

The people yelled, danced, surged about; yet they seemed more excited than joyful, and joyful more because the feud had ended than because the victory was theirs. “I will, I will!” Panigpak sobbed. “Yes, my sending will go forth as soon as can be, to bargain with Sedna for calm weather and many fish. And my sending will likewise ask if she who rules the deeps knows aught of your folk.”

“Then, Bengta,” Eyjan said low, “you must decide your own tomorrows, and your child’s.”

Haakon’s daughter drew free. Tears had made runnels through the soot on her face; the skin shone hawthorn blossom fair. But she wept no more, her head was aloft, her Norse rang: “That I did last year, when I chose Minik for us twain.”

The visitors gave her an astonished regard. She clenched her fists and met it. Silence dropped over the Inuit.

“Yes,” she said. “Did you think he took me away out of lust? Never would he force a woman, or deceive her; he knows not how to. And we were playmates once. He would have brought Hallfrid and me to my father. I begged him otherwise, and in charity he yielded. Charity. He had a good and able wife- who has also made me welcome. Few Inuit want two, when at need they can borrow; I think you of Faerie can see how clean a help that is between friends. I? I knew not an art of the many an Inuk woman must know. I could only swear I would try to learn. Give me time, and I hope to be no longer a burden on him.”

“So you love him?” Eyjan murmured.

“Not as I loved Sven,” Bengta said. “But for what Minik is, yes, I do.”

It was not clear how well her husband had followed her waterfall of words. He did flush and, in an abashed way, looked pleased.

“My hope is in him, and Hallfrid’s,” she said. “Where else is any? I talked with these folk through my whole life, every hour I could. I too, like you, became aware of the Fimbul Winter on its way; for they told how, year by year, they watched the glaciers grow and the sea lie ever earlier frozen, ever later thawed. When at last I sat in an ill-made house, fireless, among three corpses, my baby weakly mewing in my arms for hunger, I was sure of our doom. We in the Vestri Bygd could hang onto our misery till it strangled us; or we could go down to the Mid and Ostri Bygdsif those hold out—and be paupers. Whereas the Inuit-Look around you. They’ve done what the Norse will always be too stubborn for, they’ve learned how to live in this country that, after all, is my home-live well.

“If you were me, Eyjan, would you not have snatched at a chance to join them?”

“Of course,” the other girl answered. “But I am not Christian.”

“What’s the Church to me?” Bengta cried. “The maunderings of an ignorant dodderer. I’ll take my hazard of Hell-flames, I who have been through Hell’s ice.”

Her pride melted. Suddenly she covered her eyes and gasped, “But that I wrought my father’s death. . . I will be long in atoning for.”

“Why do you say so?” Eyjan asked. “When you ran away, he harried innocent and helpless people. I doubt you ever guessed that stem man bore so wild a love for you. When the deed was done, should not their kith seek revenge, and an end to the threat?”

“The tupilak was mine!” Bengta shrieked. “I thought of it, when they wanted to send me back for the sake of peace. I wore down Panigpak till he made it. Mine!”

She sank to her knees. “I told him and everybody-whatever they did, quarrels and killings must worsen with worsening years-as long as the Norse remained-whereas if we drove them out, though it cost lives of theirs-it would be a mercy to them also—and I believed this. Holy Mary, Mother of God, witness I believed it!”

Eyjan raised her and embraced her again. Tauno said slowly, “I see. You wanted your kin, the darlings of your youth. yot wanted them out before too late. But the angakok would havc recalled and dismantled his creature next spring, whatever hap pened, would he not?”

“Y -y-yes,” she stammered on Eyjan’s breast. “Then it slew my father. ”

“We told you, he blessed you ere he died,” Tauno said. Hi ran fingers through his locks. .. And yet... strange. . . how strange. . . the tupilak sent not in hate but in love.”

Presently Atitak, Minik’s second wife, was calm enough to help prepare a feast. That night the northlights carne forth in such splendor that they covered half of heaven.

XI

Summer had passed, fall come back. The Danish ling bloomed purple, rowan flared, aspen trembled in gold. Down from the hunter’s moon drifted a lonesome wander-song of geese. In the mornings breath smoked and puddles crunched underfoot.

Sunlight and cloud shadows chased each other across the land, on the wings of a chilly wind. Asmild Cloister took no heed. Foursquare among oaks that soughed with their last leaves, its bricks seeming doubly red against the heath beyond, it looked across a small lake to Viborg-cathedral towers, spire of the Black Friars’ church, walls of a guardian castle-as if yonder market town were unreal. That was not true of the sisters themselves, who carried on many charitable works; but here they had their retreat, whose harmony the world could not trouble.

Or so it had seemed.

Three came riding from Viborg, in accordance with earlier messages back and forth. They appeared respectable, in good but sober garb, on horses of the best stock. Dismounting at the nunnery, the slender young man with flaxen hair assisted the pretty though clearly older woman down with due courtesy. His servant, who took charge of the beasts, was a burly fellow; but he must double as a bodyguard, and his own manners were seemly. The f1rst two requested admittance and entered with every deference.

Notwithstanding, the prioress received them bleakly. “I must obey the bishop’s command,” she said. “Nevertheless, the saints bear witness that this is most irregular. Know I shall be praying that you do not succeed in bereaving us of our fairest jewel.”

“That’s not our aim, reverend mother,” Niels Jonsen avowed in his mildest tone. “You’ll recall from the correspondence that we twain are paying a debt of honor.”

“Little enough have I been given to read, and that as it were a palimpsest,” the prioress snapped. “I am not so innocent that I cannot tell when there has been conniving-bargains struck, pressure brought to bear, temptations dangled-yes, even among lords of the Church.”

“Those are grave charges, reverend mother,” Ingeborg Hjalmarsdatter warned. Realizing that she had indeed said too much, the prioress paled. Ingeborg smiled. “I understand. The girl has become dear to you, right? Then surely it should please you that now she’ll have a choice which was not hers before, and if she chooses to stay here-as well she may-it’s because her devotion is freely given.”

“You speak of devotion, you? I’ve had inquiries made. Your presence besmirches this house.”

“I’ve always heard as how anger is amongst the deadly sins,” Niels said, his own brow flushed. “Shall we get on with our business, reverend mother?”

Thus the episcopal will was done. Niels and Ingeborg were led to the courtyard. Nobody else remained to listen, though doubtless several peered from windows beyond earshot.

Margrete, whose flesh had been Yria, came out into the cloister arcade and halted. Not yet a novice, she was attired in a gown and wimple that suggested the black Augustinian habit. While she had gained inches and the shapeless raiment could not entirely hide waxing fullness of breasts and hips, it was still as if a child stood there, huge-eyed in the delicate face, lips timidly parted.

Ingeborg advanced to take her hands, “Margrete, dear,” she greeted. “You know us not, but you know of us. We’re your friends, come to help you.”

The girl shrank back. “They told me I must see you,” she whispered.

“Ha! What else have they told you about us?” Niels snorted. “You’re a prize they’ll not gladly yield. The pilgrim trade—”

Ingeborg frowned over her shoulder. “Hush,” she said. “This is no time for bickering.” To Margrete: “All we wish of you is that you listen to us, and ask whatever questions you like. It’s in private because some persons might be harmed, did the tale go abroad. You must swear you’ll breathe no word of it yourself, unless you hear something wicked that you’d sin if you kept hidden. You won’t, I promise. The tale is of those who cared for your wellbeing enough to stake their lives in the cause-your brothers and sister, Margrete.”

“I haven’t any,” the maiden stammered. “Not any more.”

“Would you disown them? Why, you’d be in the sea today, unless you’d died the way an animal dies, save that they brought you ashore. Sit down.” Ingeborg urged Margrete to a bench. “Pay heed.”

A flaw of wind swooped into the court, raw and boisterous. A cloud passed overhead like a white banner. Crows laughed.

The story of the merman’s children was soon told, for Niels and Ingeborg softened it much. Margrete’s pallor grew more deep at first, but later blood coursed visibly through her cheeks.

“The upshot is this,” Niels finished. “The lords temporal and spiritual who’re concerned know only that I’d fain honor a pledge to a comrade, and that my confessor gives me leave. The bishop of Roskilde has supported me stoutly throughout; we’ve become friends of a sort. Besides, donations in my name, made in. . . hm . . . thankfulness to the saints. . . they bring more of the gold to the Church as a whole, without drawing dangerous remark. Also, he agrees it’s right you should have an inheritance from your kinfor of course he’s aware by now that they, the halflings, led that faring, though I’ve held back from letting out more to him. “Well, a fortune awaits you in Copenhagen. Bishop Johan’s found a family—the man’s a rich merchant-who’ll be glad to adopt you, see to your upbringing, make you a fine marriage. You’re welcome to ride thither with us, if you want.”

“I’ve met the family,” Ingeborg added. “They’re good, kindly, sensible; there’s peace in that home.”

“Liveliness too,” Niels smiled. “You’ll enjoy yourself.”

“Are they pious?” Margrete asked.

“The bishop picked them, didn’t her’

The girl sat mute for a spell, in the blustery day. “I had some forewarning of this,” she said finally, staring at the flagstones. “Mother Ellin was hard set against it—”

“Are you happy here?” Ingeborg inquired.

“What has become of. . . Tauno and Eyjan?”

Margrete did not see the pain that crossed the others. “We know not,” said Niels. “Since more than a year.”

Ingeborg laid an arm around the girl. “Are you happy here?’ she repeated. “If you truly are, why, stay. You can deed your legacy to the convent, or do whatever else you want with it. We came just to give you your freedom, darling.”

Margrete drew a sharp breath. Her fingers clung to her knees. “The sisters. . . are . .. . kind. I. . . am learning things—”

Ingeborg nodded. “But you share Tauno’s blood.”

“I ought to stay. Mother Ellin says I ought!”

“Those who rank her say you needn’t,” Niels reminded.

“Oh, I would like children—” The slight form bent over in weeping.

Ingeborg sought to embrace her. Margrete pulled away, rose, retreated to a pillar and hugged that while the sobs racked her. Man and woman waited.

Presently, still hiccoughing but with calm welling up from within, the maiden turned around to them and said:

“Yes, I must pray for guidance, but I do think I’ll go. Best it not be with you, though. Could you get me a different escort for, oh, next week?”

“We can abide that long in Viborg,” Niels offered.

Margrete stood stiffly before them and forced the words forth: “No, please not. I should see you two no more than needful, ever. For I am a living sign of God’s grace, and you—I’ve heard about your ways—oh, do mend them, do marry! Shun those halflings, too, for your salvation’s sake, unless you can get them to take baptism. But I don’t suppose you can, and-yes, they were very good to me, I’ll pray for them if the priest says I may—but impurity and soulless things out of heathendom are not for Christian people to consort with, are they?”