Feileg returned to the pool.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘The wolves can tell children go all over this mountain, but the tracks go over and over each other. They drink here and then go up there. Then they come back. Or so it seems.’
Adisla looked at the water. It was very clear and strangely not frozen. They were a good height above the valley floor, and even down there the river was solid and any pools were frozen a hard blue. This was still liquid.
‘There is no ice here,’ said Adisla.
Feileg looked at the water. That hadn’t occurred to him. He dipped his hand in. It wasn’t warm, but it was nowhere near as cold as it should have been. It was clear too, very clear.
‘Enchantment?’ he said.
‘Perhaps. Is this an entrance, do you think?’ she said.
‘Maybe one of them. There are supposed to be many, but neither I nor the wolves can find them.’
‘Will you go in?’
‘Yes.’ First he built a fire inside the Noaidi tent. Then he spent a few moments puffing and blowing beside the water, rubbing his hands and stamping his feet. Adisla wondered what he was doing and thought he looked far from confident. He went in up to his waist.
‘It is not cold,’ he said, ‘not at all.’
He went in deeper, made of few back and forth movements, tried to dive but immediately came back to the surface choking and coughing. Then he tried again, but with the same result.
‘Are you all right?’ said Adisla.
‘Yes.’ He was shaking. He steeled himself and put his face into the water. Then he did dive and didn’t appear for a couple of heartbeats. He came back up in a flurry of flapping arms and kicking legs, beating at the water with his hands and gulping down mouthfuls. Gasping, he managed to find his feet and stagger to the fire, where she cradled his shivering body in her arms as the Noaidi had done for her when she had gone over the side of the ship.
He regained his breath. ‘There is something down there, a lip on the bottom. It is possible to go underneath. I will try again.’
‘Wait a moment, you need to rest,’ she said.
She had never seen him look like this. For the first time since she had known him, the wolfman had fear in his eyes.
‘What is it?’ she said.
‘There must be other ways in.’
‘Is this a way in?’
‘There is a rope and it is secured to something. I think it’s a guide. But there will be other ways in. The boys can’t take everything in this way. It would all be soaked.’
‘This is the way in we have; why search for another?’
Feileg looked at the ground. ‘I don’t like the water,’ he said.
‘Oh Feileg,’ said Adisla. She squeezed him to her. He looked into her eyes and on impulse she rested her lips on his in a light kiss. Feileg didn’t know what to say, still less what to do.
Adisla slipped from his arms, took three big gulps of breath and dived into the pool.
48
At first Saitada had gone north by mistake, through deserted farmsteads, past houses where now only rats sheltered from the cold. She had picked up some things of use to her there — two mouldy blankets which provided some warmth, enough rags to cover her face, bind her feet and wrap the sword, and a cup in which to melt snow for water.
It had been three days before she had seen smoke from a hut, and when she had spoken the name Authun and gestured to ask if he was there, the people had laughed and pointed to the south past the Troll Wall. They thought she was a simpleton but still poured their advice into her ears. It was not safe to travel to the south. The land around those mountains was cursed. Nightmares of death and torture had come down from the slopes and now no one could stand to live there. The witches, it was said, were dying and their magic had poisoned the land. Saitada listened and said nothing more. She could understand them, though she didn’t know how.
That night the son of the house decided to have a look at what the old beggar had in her bundle, but as he went to prise it from Saitada’s fingers he caught a glimpse of that burn on the side of her face and went back to his bed. In the morning, ashamed by his actions the night before, he gave her a warm cloak, some old boots and a rough tunic that the dog had been using for a bed. Saitada bowed to thank them for their hospitality and turned for the long journey south.
Authun’s people had not forgotten him, and at the farms and among the flocks they told her where she needed to go. The snow was lighter in the south, though the wind was cruel. Still, the people kept to the tradition of welcome for travellers that existed throughout that land, took her in by night and pointed her on her way the next morning. She found him two days’ walk into the Iron Woods.
A hunter took her half the way in out of pity for her face and showed her the direction she needed to take — to keep among the birches and come down if the woods turned to only firs, to keep the slope to her left, the Pole Star to her right and to trust to luck for the rest. After so long in the dark the night made her dizzy and her head felt open to the sky. And what a sky. It was shot with fire, swirls of green and red that seemed to her as if the gods had lit their beacons to rejoice in what she was doing. She didn’t stop to stare. Her purpose and her need for warmth drove her on.
It was the following evening and the moon was full when she met him. He was sitting on a rock looking into a pool. Much of it was frozen, but where the pool was fed by a small waterfall the water was still free. His long silver hair shone in the moonlight like water itself, or like a prophecy of how the waterfall would look when the cold finally took it. He did not look at her but remained focused on the pool. Without turning his head, he said, ‘Do not look to me for battle, stranger; there are enough widows screaming in my dreams.’
Saitada did not reply. The king had no fire and no cloak and was so still that the plumes of steam that came from his freezing breath made her think of a mountain wreathed in mist. Eventually he looked up.
No spearman or berserk could have made him stand, but Saitada did.
‘Lady, I have thought of you,’ he said.
She bowed her head.
The king went on. ‘That thought drew me here.’ He pointed to the pool. ‘He is in here, the man you saw me send to the ocean floor, and the other kinsmen I threw away. It seems to me that this is a magic pool, fed not by the hills but by the tears of the widows and orphans I have made.’
He turned to look at the waterfall and then back to her. No enemy could have put him in such a state of agitation.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I am sorry for what I did to you. Your face haunts my dreams. I took your children and left you to monsters. And for what? To influence fate when we know all fates are set at birth. The child will not bring everlasting fame to the Horda, or if he will, in no way that I can see. And if he does, what of it?’
Still Saitada said nothing. She did not hate the king. He had done no more than move her from one place to another, she thought, as she had been moved from the smith to the farmer to the priests. It was her fate in life to be a slave. He had not, as the witch had done, parted her from her children.
Authun did not see it that way and felt the shame build further in him. Already that shame had taken him from his kingdom, from his family and his battles to sit in the freezing woods, listening to the voice of the waters for year upon year and going to war on the person he had been. And yet, when robbers came, when bears struck at him or the winter bit, he could not let himself go, could not die, and fought always for life. He hunted when he would rather have starved, drank when he would have died of thirst. Saitada had been wrong. Authun couldn’t kill anyone at all. He couldn’t kill himself. He couldn’t step over the threshold he had pushed so many others across. The dishonour of that hovered above him like a mighty fist that could smash him at any instant.