stared at him for a long time until it changed to become a mask like travelling players used to tell their tales — stuck together with fur and twine.
‘What do you want from me?’
The thing said nothing, just watched him, its face bobbing at the edge of the liquid dark like that of a drowned man in black water.
‘What do you want from me?’
Terrible hunger consumed Azemar’s mind. He needed to eat. He needed to eat!
‘You are a wolf.’
The voice made him start. The dark was unyielding. The voice had spoken in Norse. This was not an hallucination but something real and near to him.
‘I am a man.’
‘You were a man. The wolf stares through your eyes as I have seen him stare before and hope never to see him stare again.’
‘There is no wolf in me.’
‘Then why do you cleave to that corpse?’
Azemar moved his hands about him. The man he had been lying on was quite cold.
Azemar wept. ‘I will not survive this place.’
‘You will survive, Fenrisulfr. You will outlive the gods.’
‘I feel harm in your voice. You are here to kill me?’
‘No. The destiny you carry would not allow it. I cannot find the waters; I cannot find a way to kill you.’
‘What waters? What destiny do I carry?’
‘To be my killer.’
‘Who are you?’
‘I am you.’
There was a shimmering, like the moon reflected on water. He blinked and rubbed his eyes, willing them to work. What was it? Skin. A tall man stood close by, a tall man with pale skin and hair of burning red. There was no light other than the man’s body. Right next to him, crouching and seemingly oblivious to the vision behind him, was someone else, the one who had been talking.
He peered at the crouching figure. His own face looked back at him but more weathered, thinner by far than he had been before the ordeal in the dungeon.
‘You have come looking for her,’ said his double, and it was as if a gateway had opened in Azemar’s mind. He rememberd how even the glimpse of the lord’s daughter riding by had tormented his dreams, how he had struggled with his lust. He recalled other dreams too — a girl with blonde hair by a fire in the snow, a headless body on a beach. The visions seemed so real they were almost memories.
‘Go a long way away from this place,’ said his double, ‘and never come back here, no matter how you are drawn to do so.’
‘Kill me here,’ said Azemar. ‘Kill me here!’
‘I cannot.’
‘Why not?’
The double sprang at Azemar, putting one hand on his chest to locate him before he went for his neck. Immensely strong fingers squeezed Azemar’s windpipe but he had no fear of death. In that place, his body stewing in its own secretions, bitten by rats and fleas, rubbed raw by the rough floor, his mind falling into madness, he welcomed the end. And yet it would not come.
The pale man whose body lit the dark moved his hand in a gesture of calm, and the fingers let go of Azemar’s throat. His attacker fell back and sat down. He looked around him with the hopeless gaze of a blind man. Azemar sensed his double couldn’t see, despite the glowing figure behind him. Then he was gone, swallowed by the gloom.
The pale figure came forward to cradle Azemar in his arms.
‘Who are you? An angel?’
‘No. I am of the older earth.’
‘A devil then?’
‘Men make devils. For what is a devil but an angel of whom men disapprove?’
‘Of whom God disapproves. The father of creation cast out the bad angels and they fell to hell, where they became devils.’
The strange man laughed. ‘Then I am a devil. But what of you? The father of creation shakes to hear your name.’
‘That is blasphemy.’
‘It is the truth, Fenrisulfr.’
Azemar knew that myth. Loki had had a son who was a wolf and grew so powerful that the gods tricked and chained him to a rock, where he waits to the final day when he will break his fetters and consume the gods. His father had told such stories; though he had been sincere in his new Christianity the stories of the old land were still dear to him. Azemar had been close to his father. He would see him in heaven.
‘I would be with my father now,’ he said, ‘my holy father and my earthly one.’
‘I am here.’
‘You are not my father.’
‘I am your father and your mother both.’
The knowledge poured in on him, words and visions whispering and flashing in his mind. He had been a foundling. His brothers were all so blond and big, he skinny and dark. A vision entered his mind — a woman, scarred and gaunt with a baby at her breast. His brother — or the boy he had called his brother — lay sick in a longhouse, more likely to die than make the sea journey to a new life in Neustria. The woman was at the door. She could cure the boy but there was a price to pay — they must take the baby she had and raise it. His mother, who had loved her newest son more than all the others put together, had agreed straight away. The child had recovered and, because Azemar had brought such good fortune, they made the effort to have him accepted by the monastery when they arrived in Neustria.
‘What is to become of me?’ said Azemar.
‘My son, you have great things to do. You must drink of the waters.’
‘What waters?’
‘The waters that the dead god gave his eye to drink. Vision for vision, sight for sight in the waters of wisdom at the centre of the earth.’
‘And what will they tell me?’
‘I cannot know. Only that you must go there if we are to have any chance at all of getting rid of the old hater.’
‘Of who?’
‘Old Grimnir, the gallows god, mad King Glapsvithr, the lord of the corpses, Odin.’
‘I…’ Azemar felt as if his head lay beneath a crushing stone, that enormous pressure was building within him. The name Odin moved him to fury, to hatred that went far beyond that of a holy man for a pagan devil. He had no idea why. He growled and spat, cried out. Around him the dying men of the Numera seemed to answer his calls, howling and cursing and begging to be free.
Azemar looked up into the eyes of the man who held him, the pale, burning beautiful being who had called him son.
‘Father?’
‘Yes.’
‘Save me,’ said Azemar.
‘You are such a prodigy among horrors, you do not need me to save you, Fenrisulfr. Come, before you can drink, you need to eat.’
Blood dripped from the strange fellow’s fingers, and Azemar lapped at it, then bit. The skin ripped and more blood flowed. Still the bright, glowing man cradled Azemar, and as he did so, he sang — a song of lovers caught in a story told by a god to please the fates.
The song intoxicated Azemar, filled him with ecstasy, but was it the song in the blood that seemed to draw
