Sevenwaters: Seer Of Sevenwaters Part 15

I am up, on my feet. I take four steps and sit down on the bench beside her. My heart is pounding, a drum for dancing. My arms go around her shoulders. She turns toward me and presses her face against my chest. I hold her; she weeps. I remember all the things I said to her last night, and I am ashamed of myself.

We sit for some time thus. I am hoping Muirrin does not decide to come back with Gull to check on Sibeal's welfare. Our pose could be that of a brother comforting a sister; it is quite chaste. My thoughts, however, are not those of a brother. Gull has seen this already. I raise a hand to stroke Sibeal's hair, fine, rippling hair, as dark as a crow's wing. She is like a girl from an old tale, a forbidden princess, an enchantress in a mysterious wood. She is the rarest creature I have encountered in all my life. Even in the lost part, the part I cannot remember, there can surely have been n.o.body like her.

"Hush," I murmur. "There, now." And after a while I hum a tune, as if I were lulling a child.

"Ardal," she says, her voice m.u.f.fled against my shirt. A clean shirt; I thank Gull for that.

"Mm?"

"What is that song?"

"A lullaby. I will call a hundred larks from the meadow, to sing my little one to sleep. I will call a hundred owls from the dark forest, to watch over my little one's cradle. I will summon a hundred stars from the heavens, to light my little one's dreams." My mother's voice comes to me, singing in the Norse tongue, and I see her blue eyes with their tilted corners, her flaxen braid coiled like a golden crown around her head, her linen ap.r.o.n with its rows of red embroidery, houses and horses and trees. I learned both tongues from the cradle, Brezhoneg and Norse. No wonder I have a facility for translation. I would like my mother to meet Sibeal, but I know this will never happen.

"What a lovely song. G.o.ds, I didn't know I had so many tears in me." She sits up; withdraws her arms from around my waist. I release her. It feels like giving up my heart. But perhaps that is already lost.

Sibeal is delving for a handkerchief. She finds one tucked into her belt, wipes her eyes, struggles to compose herself. Even with red eyes and streaming nose, she is beautiful. Suddenly she sits straight, staring at me. "Ardal! You walked by yourself!"

So I did. Only now do I realize it. "Four steps," I say, feeling my mouth twist. "A true feat of strength."

"You did something you couldn't do before. Four steps today, perhaps eight tomorrow. Evan did say it might be midsummer before you are well enough to travel. I'm truly proud of you, Ardal."

And now I can no more tell her I must leave the island than I can summon the hundred stars I sang of. I should go away. I must go. I am the ill luck man, bringer of doom and destruction. I am the one who should have drowned with the ship; I am the one who should have fallen from the cliff. But I live, and every moment I am here I put her life at risk. Say it, Felix. I cannot. For tonight, let me pretend that I can stay here. Let me pretend that I can hold her in my arms again; let me dream of a future with the two of us in it, together. Let me believe in miracles.

CHAPTER 8.

*Sibeal*

Rodan was buried among the island's own departed, who lay in an area sheltered by a dry-stone wall, on a rise with a fine view westward over the sea. A message had been sent to his chieftain in Connacht, carried by a man from the mainland settlement. As for Rodan's comrades, they would stay and see out the full period of their training. All of them said that was what he would have expected.

Too much death. Too much unease. Each morning I got up, intending to walk to the seer's cave and spend the day in meditation and prayer. Each morning I found a reason not to go: Clodagh had a sore back; Muirrin was busy with injured men and needed help; the garden had to be weeded; I should be keeping an eye on Ardal, who had developed a sudden fierce will to be strong again and was inclined to exhaust himself working too hard at it. He could walk out into the garden now, and sit in the sun watching as I dug and pruned and harvested. Whether he had remembered any more of his past, I had no idea. He had gone very quiet, even with me.

In this manner days pa.s.sed, days in which I became more and more aware of the mutterings in the community about ill luck and who might have brought it to Inis Eala. Now every accidental fall, every dispute, every small reversal seemed to reinforce the belief that an evil had come among them. Johnny told me that the foolish talk would pa.s.s, and that I should not let it concern me. My sisters dismissed it. Cathal's mouth grew tighter, his face paler as he heard it. His eyes were haunted. I knew he was thinking about his father.

To reach the seer's cave I must go past the place where Rodan had fallen. I could not put off the expedition forever. On a clear, bright morning I set out with my provisions and my warm cloak, and Fang in attendance. I would go to that place on the cliff top and offer prayers for Rodan's spirit. Then I would walk on to spend the day in Finbar's sanctuary. I would seek a wisdom higher than that of humankind.

Fang's behavior had grown still odder. She would run a short distance, then halt as if turned to stone, her muzzle pointed out to sea. When she was in this pose, the dog was impervious to all else. There was no point in calling her. Even pa.s.sing sheep were ignored. Then, abruptly, Fang would come back to herself and run after me as if nothing had happened. "What is it, little dog?" I asked her as we followed the track toward the cliffs. "What do you see?" But the only reply was the rush of the waves below us, and the high calling of the birds.

Fang's erratic pace made the walk slower than it might have been. I was sufficiently concerned for her welfare not to go so far ahead that the dog might lose sight of me. Then again, perhaps I was a coward. Perhaps my feet were dragging because I did not want to reach that place where Rodan had gone over. I gritted my teeth and walked on.

I rounded a corner with the dog at my heels and my heart faltered. A naked figure stood poised, arms stretched out as if for flight, bare feet on the very edge of the cliff. Her hair streamed in the wind; her eyes were fixed on the horizon, away to the north. Svala, like a lovely carven figurehead. If I made a sound, if I startled her, she would fall. She was standing in exactly the spot where Rodan had gone over.

Fang had no such scruples. She pushed past me, trotted ahead along the path and stopped to sniff at the heap of clothing Svala had abandoned on the ground.

"Svala," I said in a murmur. "Step back from the edge." Even as I spoke, my mind showed me an image of her falling.

She turned, gloriously confident of her balance, and walked over to the path. She stooped to pick up her gown. My heart was pounding, my palms clammy. I forced myself to breathe.

"You frightened me," I said. "I thought . . . " No, I would not tell her what I had thought, for it was obviously wrong. She'd had no intention of jumping. I saw that in her proud stance and in her calm eyes. "Never mind," I said, knowing she could not understand.

Svala donned gown and shawl. She did not seem to have shoes with her. Once dressed, she moved to one side to let me pa.s.s on my way to the cave. It was not until I had gone some distance along the track that I realized she was following me, steady and silent, a few paces behind.

Logic said, She's big, she's strong, she's unpredictable, and the path is narrow. Instinct said, Walk on, so I did, even though it became apparent when I turned to look that Fang was not coming with us. We reached the opening that led to Finbar's cave. I slipped through, making my way along the narrow, dim tunnel, and Svala came after me, quiet as a shadow. I should have been frightened, perhaps. But it felt right that she was here with me. It felt like a turning point.

Wild creature that she so often seemed, Svala understood from the first why I was in the cave. A moment after I settled cross-legged by the still pool, she was there by my side, back straight, hands loose in her lap, eyes on the water. She stayed beside me as I went through my slow patterns of breathing; as I spoke prayers, repeated pa.s.sages of lore and waited for the wisdom of the G.o.ds. Not a sound did she utter. Not a move did she make.

My preparation was long. I waited until the sun struck down through the opening above the water, filling the shadowy cavern with gold. The pool became a vessel of light. Now. Now was the time.

I gazed upon the surface and in my mind I said: I was led to save Ardal's life so he could fulfill a mission. The runes seemed to confirm it. Both of us believed it was urgent that he remember and act. But he will not tell what he has remembered. It seems to me that this silence makes the whispers louder, the talk of an ill luck man. That sets a shadow on everyone. How will the truth be known?

Nothing. Nothing at all but the light on the water and the steady sound of Svala's breathing. All this time she had kept watch beside me. I waited, and it seemed to me the cave grew quieter, and the water clearer, as if it had nothing at all to show. The G.o.ds were silent. Even Finbar would not help me. It was all too easy to supply my own answer. You are distracted. Your mind strays all too easily. As a seer, you are becoming unreliable.

Svala's hand closed around my arm. After so long in trance, I jumped at her touch like a startled hare. My heart raced. I glanced across, and she met my eyes, putting a finger to her lips. Shhh. Still holding on to me, she turned her gaze back on the pool, and after a moment I did the same.

Something was stirring on the water's surface now. A vision was taking form. Waves crashing onto rocks; a ship tossed about by monstrous seas. Even as I saw it in the water, I felt the decking shudder under my feet, the whip of salt spray, the bruising thump of folk thrown this way and that. A gale. A storm. A tempest, sweeping the vessel before it like a sc.r.a.p of debris. A powerful dread gripped me; it fettered me more tightly than Svala's strong hand. This will destroy us. No man can survive such a storm . . .

And then, land. Rearing up with a dark inevitability, land. A craggy island, a lonely mountain rising from the sea, wearing a white skirt of breakers. The ship barreled forward, propelled by the surge. In my mind, men were screaming, cursing, calling to their G.o.ds to save them. The vessel plowed on, and now I could see a narrow opening between two rocky headlands, and beyond it a bay, and a strip of level, pebbly sh.o.r.e. To oars! someone shouted.

There was a juddering, a shivering, and the ship's course changed. Not straight for the rocks now, but toward that gap, heading for safe water. Pull! Pull! The vessel entered the narrow pa.s.sage, the rocks so close I could see the sh.e.l.lfish clinging to the dark surfaces. Monstrous cliffs loomed to either side; the boat was in shadow. Pull! And then we were in the bay, the rowers gasping with effort, the ship slowing as they rested their arms. Safe. Oh G.o.ds, safe at last.

Like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky it comes, rearing out of the water right by the prow, taller than an oak tree, taller than a castle tower. Its eyes are bright with malice, its claws sharp as scythes, its mouth . . . Oh, its mouth lined with long white teeth, and its slavering, blue-green tongue . . . Its neck snakes from side to side. Looking, choosing: Which will I take first? Men scream. They scramble for crossbows, spears, knives. Pull! yells someone with more presence of mind than the others, and the crew takes up oars, turning the ship in an attempt to evade the beast. The creature's monstrous head whips down to deck level; its foul breath sets us choking and gasping. It toys with us awhile, moving one way, the other way, so the ship cannot pa.s.s. It slaps the water with its tail, making great waves. Pull! Pull! One man, at least, keeps his terror in check. Closer to the sh.o.r.e now, closer still and . . . A scream like ripping cloth as the creature reaches out a forefoot and, with a stabbing movement, plunges its claw through a crewman's chest, impaling him. It tosses him high, opens its jaws, catches him as he falls and, in a convulsive gulp, swallows him whole.

Breathe, Sibeal. The vision faded to shreds and fragments; the boat on an erratic course toward the sh.o.r.e, wild-eyed men rowing with the strength of sheer terror; the water-beast opening its long-toothed mouth to show a welter of b.l.o.o.d.y flesh and splintered bone, then reaching out for another hapless crewman. Before I could see him taken the vision was gone, and there was nothing but the calm water of the seer's pool, golden under the midday sun. Breathe. Use what you have learned.

My gut twisted in revulsion, my skin crawled, my heart shrank from the horror of it. I breathed. I prayed. I worked on not being sick. When I could move, I turned to Svala, who had taken her hand from my arm and was waiting, silent, beside me. The look on her face shocked me. Svala was smiling. Her eyes were full of light, as if what she had seen had uplifted her and made her joyous. Perhaps her vision had been quite different from mine. Perhaps the G.o.ds had granted her a glimpse of happier times, before she came to Inis Eala, before she suffered the loss that broke her heart.

I reached for my water skin, took out the stopper and drank deeply. I offered it to Svala, but she pushed it away. Making a cup of her hands, she took water from the seer's pool, lifting it to her mouth to drink. I was shocked; it seemed an act of sacrilege.

Svala was trying to tell me something, gesturing. The pool; herself-fingers tapping her breastbone with some force-then a sweeping movement toward the cave entry. The pool again, herself, then me, then a mime that was unmistakably of rowing. I want to go. I must go there. You take me.

"You can't mean that," I breathed. "You can't." Go to that place of monsters and impossible waves? Svala and me, rowing beside each other? I must have misunderstood. But then, if she had seen a different vision, perhaps she was asking to go somewhere else, somewhere she could not describe to me. I want to go home. Back to the place I come from.

"You will go home, Svala," I said, ignoring the talk I had heard in the dining hall, about Knut perhaps being invited to stay for a trial period on Inis Eala, where his superb combat skills would be an a.s.set. "You and Knut. Johnny can arrange for you to go as soon as he's satisfied that you're well enough." I wondered about that. One could not describe the strapping Svala as unwell, but she was not as other women were, and I could understand Johnny's reluctance to send her over to the mainland settlement or beyond. I could not see her living her life in any ordinary village or indeed any ordinary household. Knut did his best to protect her, but he could hardly do so all the time, and she had the capacity to wreak havoc. "A ship, yes. A voyage to . . . the place you set out from. Ulfricsfjord. Not with me. With Knut. Your husband." That, I could not mime, but I hoped she would recognize the names.

Svala rose to her considerable height, towering over me where I knelt by the water. Her fists were clenched. She looked at me, then spat, precisely, on the cavern floor beside her feet. A sound issued from her, an explosion of fury and frustration.

I felt somewhat as a child might on finding itself alone in a field with a horned bull. Her anger frightened me. We were far from the settlement and I no longer had Fang with me. But then, I had not discouraged her from coming with me. It was possible we both wanted the same thing: truth. I must try harder to understand.

"A serpent," I said, kneeling up and indicating the shape with my hands, next to the pool. "Mouth, bites, like this. Claws, like this." I forced myself into a bizarre reenactment of the hideous scene-G.o.ds, I had seen this; in my first vision of Rodan's fall I had seen a man taken by a sea monster-and saw instant recognition in Svala's eyes. Disarmed in an instant, she squatted down next to me, watching in apparent fascination.

Boat. How could I show a boat? Ah-the half-empty water skin. I pushed the stopper in firmly, then floated the skin along the pond, showing with my hands the rowers, the sh.o.r.e to which they were heading. As the c.u.mbersome vessel pa.s.sed Svala, she reached out to add her own part to the story, using her arm, her hand, her fingers to play the part of the monster. Snap! I take this man for my first bite. s.n.a.t.c.h! I take this one now. And now this, and this . . . There was no longer any doubt that we had seen the same vision.

I brought the vessel back to the side of the pond, beached it and left it, rising to my feet. "This place?" I asked her, motioning toward the little scene. "You, I, go this place?"

She leapt up and seized my arms with both hands, nodding, smiling with an energy that was almost frenzied. At last! At last someone understands!

"But why? Why, Svala? And where is it?" I swept my hand in a circle, then pointed north, south, east, west.

Her arm rose with complete confidence. Due north. Due north? What lay there? The Orcades, destination of their original voyage, were to the northeast. I knew of no land at all to the north.

"I wish you could explain why," I said, more to myself than to my companion. "That might be the key to everything. If only you could tell me your story, Svala."

She put her arms around me, shocking me profoundly, for it was the last thing I had expected from her. I returned the gesture, saddened that I had not fully understood, and perhaps never would; concerned that what she seemed to want was a crazy thing, a thing that made no sense at all, even if I had been able to make it happen.

Svala murmured something, not words, more of a singing sound, like a s.n.a.t.c.h of mournful chant. She was so much taller than I that in this embrace my cheek was against her heart, and in the moment of her singing I felt its message beating straight into me, the rhythm that of a great marching drum. Home! Home!

Dear G.o.ds. Home? That island with not a sc.r.a.p of anything growing on it, that rock beset by howling winds and mountainous seas? No one could survive in such a place. I tried to imagine Knut and Svala eking out a living in some isolated hut, sc.r.a.ping sh.e.l.lfish off the rocks and bolting their door at night while the monster swam about the bay. Impossible. I could not believe it. They could not have come from such a place. Besides, it was our reef the boat had been wrecked on, not that of a wild, far-off isle. It made no sense at all.

"I'll try to help," I murmured, not knowing where to start. A place like that was surely home to nothing but sea creatures, and even those probably had the common sense to keep away lest they become the monster's next meal. Perhaps the vision was entirely symbolic.

We walked back toward the settlement. Fang was still nowhere to be seen, but halfway along the track we met Knut coming the other way. His face was pale, his jaw tight, his eyes furious. He strode up to us and took hold of Svala's arm. She stood quiet in his grasp, eyes down.

"Where you go?" He hurled the question at me. "I look-wife-everywhere." A sweep of the arm.

"We've been walking." Every part of me was on edge.

"Sorry," Knut said, far too late for me to believe he meant it. He attempted a smile and achieved a grimace. "Worried. Wife . . . " Lost for the right word, he tapped the side of his head. "Not safe wander here. I look all over."

"Knut," I said with some hesitation, "where did you live before you came here? Where is your home, yours and Svala's?"

He narrowed his eyes. "No speak Irish good," he said.

"Never mind." I wondered if he lost his rudimentary Irish when asked a question he did not want to answer. "I'll go on ahead, then. Thank you for coming with me, Svala."

I went past them, and as I walked away I heard him speaking to her in a furious undertone. I wondered very much about the increasing talk that Knut might settle on the island. No doubt he would fit in well. He was, to all accounts, a warrior of great skill, and people seemed to like him. Since I would be leaving Inis Eala at the end of summer, the fact that I felt an instinctive distrust of the man was irrelevant. I did not think Svala could ever be happy here.

Perhaps I should share today's vision with Johnny. Or with someone else-Gull, Clodagh, Cathal? Should I talk to Knut properly, with Jouko or Kalev present to translate? Perhaps I should wait until I had a clearer idea of what those images had meant, the images that made no sense at all, for among the many faces on the stricken vessel there had been three I knew: Ardal, white as linen, his jaw set grimly; the young man I thought was his brother, Paul, pushing someone out of the way, seizing an oar, shouting orders. And Knut, rowing with the rest of them. Not a vision of the future or of a possible future. I had seen Paul's drowned body here on the island; I had performed his burial rite. In the vision he had been alive, strong. He had been the one who took control, wresting order from chaos. The images had been of time past, imagined or real. If it was real, then when he had given Johnny his sketchy account of the voyage, Knut had only told half the story.

*Felix*

I walk. From this side to that, from that side to this. I pause for breath, willing strength to my limbs. Then again, from this side to that side. Muirrin eyes me as she tends to a man's knee, but makes no comment.

Sibeal has gone to the seer's cave, the place she spoke of, where she can find peace and set her thoughts in order. I think she is angry with me. She would have me tell what I have remembered, piece by piece. She cannot understand why I hold my silence. There is something hidden in my mind, something perilous. I think it has the power to wreak havoc here.

The ill luck man. Too many have suffered because of me. To and fro I walk, to and fro, and with each pace I think of them: my father, who almost lost the Duke's favor because I could not stop my tongue; my mother, who had two fine sons and now has none; my brother, who was the friend of my heart and the companion of my journey, and who is dead. I cannot stay here. Who is to say the shipwreck was not my fault, caused by some act of negligence that I have forgotten? Who is to say what disasters I may have caused in that lost time? I must leave this place without delay.

Gull comes, and we go outside to sit on the bench in the garden.

"No more walking for now," he says, settling beside me. "Attempting too much too soon is asking for failure. Practice breathing. It is part of the cure. You nearly died, Ardal. Your body must learn to work again, and it cannot learn if you wear it out."

"This is too slow," I grumble, knowing my wise friend deserves better for the time and care he gives me. I am not angry with Gull, only with my weak body.

"If you want to find yourself back in bed for another turning of the moon, then by all means ignore my advice. You asked me to help you, Ardal. If I were training a man to fight again after a battle injury, I'd pace him just the way I'm pacing you."

I straighten my back. I attempt a few long breaths of the kind I've been shown, filling my chest slowly, stopping just before the worst of the pain will hit me. Afterward, I say, "I'm sorry."

"That's fine, provided you keep listening to good advice when it's given. We'll sit here a bit longer, and then we'll try some work on your arms."

He makes me bend and stretch, and it tires me. I do as I'm told. Gull declares himself satisfied by my efforts. When he tells me it is time to go inside and lie down awhile, for my body needs frequent rest, I bite back the words that spring to my lips: There's no time for rest! Truth to tell, my limbs ache, my chest hurts, I want the comfort of my bed more than anything. Almost anything.

As I sit by Gull, wondering if I can summon the strength to climb the two steps to the back door, that door opens and Johnny and Cathal come out, the latter carrying a sizeable box bound with leather straps.

"What's this?" Gull asks.

"We'd like a word with Ardal." Johnny turns to me. "These are some of the items washed up after the wreck. We want you to look at them, see if they help jog your memory." He glances at Gull. "Is now a good time? You could leave us awhile, if you like. Go and see Biddy."

Gull grins. "You think I'm neglecting my wife? I doubt she'll want me under her feet when she's busy in the kitchen."

Johnny returns the smile; he is not a particularly handsome man, but there is a gravity and balance in his features that compels the eye. The swirling raven tattoo only adds further distinction. "Go on," he says. "We can manage here without you."

Cathal isn't saying anything. He has placed the box on the seat beside me, and now unfastens the straps. When Gull is gone, he lifts the lid.

"I'm happy to hear you are improving, Ardal," says Johnny. "I know from Gull that your own efforts have played a part in your recovery." He hesitates, then goes on. "You understand, I'm sure, how important it is for me to know about the vessel, the crew, the cargo, the purpose of the voyage, so I can inform the appropriate people about these losses. I dispatched a message to Ulfricsfjord some time ago, based on what Knut told me. But his knowledge is limited, and I can't be sure my message went to the right quarter."

"Sibeal says you're holding back information." Cathal is far more blunt. I hear the hostility in his voice. "You must tell Johnny everything you can remember. Why you were on the ship, who else was with you, whose resources made the voyage possible. What brought you to Erin in the first place."

"Ardal," Johnny says, "if you've recalled anything at all that may be relevant to what has occurred, you must tell me. Inis Eala is under my leadership. I am responsible for the welfare of its people and the safety of its community. While visitors are here, I ask of them the same standard of behavior I expect from every man and woman on this island. That includes telling the full truth."

Seated on the bench with the two of them standing in front of me, I feel somewhat at a disadvantage. I do not know how to answer Johnny. "I remember nothing of the wreck, or of the voyage," I tell him, "except that my brother was there, and then a wave came over and washed me away."

"The voyage was to the Orcades, Knut told me. A promise of settlement for the crew, some of whom had wives with them. Some other purpose for yourself, your brother, and an older man who traveled with you."

"I remember nothing of that." I meet his eyes, and hope he can see that on this matter I am indeed telling the truth.

"We want you to look at the items in the box, Ardal," Johnny says. "It seems to me they may relate to your mission in some way. I have a few theories, but I want your ideas before I put them to you."

I sense what he leaves unsaid. Otherwise you may latch on to whatever is most convenient, so you need not tell us the truth. "Very well," I say. What was it Sibeal said they had found? Silks? The covers of a book?