down at him, telling him she was sorry to have sent him away and he could come home now.
The reindeer man was there, but he wasn’t the reindeer man; he was a reindeer and his antlers were made of stars. There was another presence too. The stars seemed to have taken shape and fallen to earth in the form of a man who rode a horse of stars and carried a bow of stars which held an arrow that was a comet.
‘Ruohtta… Ruohtta… Ruohtta…’
The other hunter had the reindeer to the ground, though it brayed in protest. Then it screamed. There was the sound of sawing. Something was put into Feileg’s hands — a pair of antlers. He held the antlers out how the reindeer man showed him. The chanting went on and on. He saw the man of stars raise his bow but it was not pointing at him. He knew the figure for what it was — a god of death — and it had come for him, but the hunters had tricked it. The comet arrow flashed towards the reindeer. There was a final hideous bray from the animal and then it was quiet.
Feileg trembled. The women and children came to lie close to him, warming the chill of the fever away, but the chant went on. The man of stars had not gone; he was fitting another arrow to his bow, though none of the hunters seemed to notice.
Vali listened hard to the drumming. It was in him and around him and did not beat alone. From behind the mountains where the fat moon dipped another rhythm answered it. The taste of the holy man’s brew filled him up and he thought he might vomit but then he felt the drums commanding his own heartbeat.
Someone was speaking to him from a long way away. The sound of the drums seemed to have a physical form, like a rope winding over the mountains to twine around him and pull him in, and he heard a voice from far away in that odd foreign language rasping out its chant.
‘Jabbmeaaakka… Jabbmeaaakka… Jabbmeaaakka…’
Vali knew that the name was chanted in hate, not invocation. Something wanted Jabbmeaaakka dead and he was caught up in that wish.
The brew was percolating through his mind, stripping away his reluctance to yield to the hunger that was calling to him. He looked at his hands. They were beautiful, and he spent a long time studying them. It had never occurred to him before just how long his fingers were, how pointed, more like talons than anything human. His teeth felt uncomfortable, too big for his mouth; he couldn’t stop licking them. There was that taste. There it was, iron and salt and a depthless beauty that held all the pull of roasting meat to a hungry man. The blood, the deep and alluring scent of blood, was in him.
‘I am strong.’ He said it out loud. The drum was faster now, the voices harsher.
‘Jabbmeaaakka… Jabbmeaaakka… Jabbmeaaakka…’
And then the rhythm seemed to take a mad tumble, fast as a rock fall. She was there, he knew, the thing they had been calling to.
He saw a child with a woman’s face, gaunt and lined. She was covered in gold, and precious gems stuck to her skin as if she were some shining snake. She was watching as the drumbeat curled around him to draw him on.
The beat was telling him something. He had to go on a long journey. She was there — Adisla, the one he had come to find.
His final thought, when it came, did not arrive from outside. It was not a stream of symbols seeping into his mind with the rhythm of the drums, though that is what the rhythm seemed to intend. Neither did it come from the grotesque girl-woman who looked on from the firelight. The magic around him was just a spark to a fire, igniting something far bigger than itself. The thought came from himself, from within. He spoke, to give it form.
‘I must fortify myself,’ said Vali.
He stood. He felt very long and sinuous, more like something made of shadow than flesh. Things were moving around him. Vali reached out to catch them, to break them, to feed on them. He felt a blow and brushed it away. He heard screams but was lost to the taste of the meat. He fed deeply, feeling the stress of his prey seep into him with a gorgeous tingle.
‘I am fortified,’ he said. There were some broken things on the ground, things that had been useful to him, things that had been going to help him, direct him and show him the way. He didn’t need them any more; he knew where he was going. He was going towards the drumming.
39
Adisla had now been on the island for months and to her surprise had been treated very well. It wouldn’t have been her first choice of a home — a long flat rock rising out of a turbulent and cold sea — but her fear that she was to be some stinking Whale Man’s bed slave had not been realised.
The people were kind: they brought her meat and bitter bread, berries and salted cheese, even gave her a rough beer to drink. She was also allowed to sleep alone — in a low conical tent which was open at the top to allow the smoke of a fire to escape. Although the tent was tiny, the little old woman detailed to care for her was skilled at building the fire and Adisla found it less smoky than a longhouse.
Her arrival had been terrifying. The whole rock had seemed to swarm with men — thirty or forty of them, all in animal masks, but not like the pelt that Feileg wore. These were skilfully constructed from supple twigs, shaped into the likeness of a bear or wolf, a bird, reindeer or seal, and covered in fur or feathers to terrible, frightening effect. The men drummed and sang and peered at her closely, but they didn’t touch or harm her.
Haarik had been given instructions on where he might find his son and been told that a scout was watching from the mainland, ready to ride a reindeer hard to the young man’s slaughter if he tried anything. The Whale Men had dealt with Norsemen before and were careful to extract oaths that they would not be harmed once Haarik’s son was released. For all his talk of violence, the king looked pleased to leave. He had a warrior’s distaste for magic and wanted to collect his son and then put as much distance between himself and the island as possible.
Most of the Whale Men soon left the rock — including the sorcerer who had travelled with her — but Adisla remained with the old woman to care for her and in the silent company of a man called Noaidi. He was small, even for a Whale Man, dark-haired with very blue eyes, and he habitually wore a wolf mask as he moved about the rock. At nights he usually went down towards the sea on the open ocean side and sat at the mouth of a huge cave, playing his drum and singing in a way that seemed to echo the sounds of the wind. Noaidi said nothing to her for days. And then, when she had been there about a week, she realised she had not actually tried to speak to him.
One night when he didn’t go off to chant Adisla saw him remove his wolf mask and go to his tent. She went across and knelt at the entrance. He was lying on some furs and the little fire had been fed until the inside of the tent was as hot as a smithy. In the firelight, without his mask, he was a shocking sight. He must have been around twenty-five but was terribly drawn, his cheeks hollow and his eyes red. He hardly seemed to notice her at first and she saw he was trembling.
‘Why am I here?’
Noaidi looked at her. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. He clearly had to think hard to remember the words and spoke Norse in a thick accent that reminded Adisla more of a cat than a man.
‘You speak our language.’
‘I know your people. Too well.’ He smiled a brief smile and she could see that he was very ill indeed.
‘Then why am I here?’
The man thought for a moment. He coughed and took a swallow of water from a cup. Then he gestured her into the tiny tent. She crawled in and sat down, very near to the blazing fire. It was uncomfortable but she wanted to question her captor. The sorcerer seemed if anything rather cold. He smiled again though, and seemed pleased to be able to talk to someone, although he was breathless and his words were halting and slow.
‘I will not lie to you. In our visions we saw a spirit that we foresaw would do us great harm — Jabbmeaaakka, the death goddess, lady of dark places and the dark places of the mind. The prophecy was clear: she would destroy us. So we looked for magic to protect ourselves. First we struck at her. It did not work. A year ago the spirit met one of our men in the underworld. The underworld in here.’ He tapped his head. ‘She killed him.
