Ursus of Ultima Thule (22 page)

He could see both clearly, but he could not clearly come to terms with both. As he felt himself grow in bodily stature, so he believed with a certainty which was almost absolute that he was also growing in experience and hence in wisdom as well. And there were times when he had to be by himself, and it seemed he felt the need more and more often, and it seemed, as well, the more he believed it the less the others were willing to accord it him.

“To be cautious is one thing,” he growled. “To be fearful of being by yourselves, another.” And when he saw them gaze at him with distress upon their faces and words upon their lips, he said, flatly, — not least because he thought that perhaps there might be in words a wise distress he cared not to hearken to — “I am not to be followed.
Bide
,” and was off, long strides, heavy and hairy arms a-swing. And looked not back.

What was the plan? He would go and think upon the plan and be free to mutter aloud, yes. What plan? Would Fireborn come to him … to them … piece by piece and bit by bit? Was he in some way to urge, perhaps to force, or surely at least by some act of his own purposefulness, to bring Fireborn to him? He was tired of this drifting through the wooded lands like a leaf among leaves. Hiding, when he was ready for confrontation. Whispering, when prepared for the shout of battle cry. Lurking, slinking: when an increasing tremor in his heart and blood shouted to him to rush forward. To rush forward upon this lowbuilt and widespreading mansion suddenly now before him in the dark timbers of the wood, to impress himself upon and to make visible his mark, as footprints in dark sand, as a brand upon a hide or balk. An axe cleaving wood. Or cleaving flesh. To cleave, himself, the yielding flesh which waited for and sang to him.

Half his mind was turned, intent, into and upon itself the while he considered the mansion within the enclosure within the basky darkness of the dale; and half his mind considered only it and what might be inside, ignoring anything, everything else. He could not even recall at what moment he first had noticed it, or what thoughts first came to him concerning it. The guards and the thralls of whoever held the place moved to and from between house and wall and their livery was yellow and brown. He saw them moving vessels of drink, and his tongue and his throat moved; he watched them toting lugs of food, and his teeth champed and his belly growled. He saw the small spears and he scorned them. The man of this place was gone, he knew, he knew, he knew.

It was almost as though he had but stood tall and straight and planted his legs a-spread on the forest path and the house to him came swimming, the soft startled murmur of its folk subsiding as they all approached. He flexed his hands and waited for a spear to move his way, but the spear-bearers bowed low before him. Servants walked backwards as he approached, gesturing him onward.

“Who keeps this place?” he asked.

“Within,”
they murmured, murmuring low:
“within, within, within.”

He passed through many chambers and observed the industry of the thralls and the neatness and the richness of all.

“Whither do you take me?” he asked, in mock bemusement at the multitude of the rooms.

“Within,”
they murmured, murmuring low:
“within, within, within, within.”

Spearpoints down, they surrounded him; heads bowed low, they compassed him about.
“Without — ”

How sweet and rich this voice. How beautiful the gesture of her arm as she motioned to her guards and servantry to keep outside, and to him, to enter. Wide was this chamber indeed and dim and deeply scented and upon a divan upon a dais she reclined and slowly, slowly, arose, and she looked level eye to level eye at him as he approached. No slim sprig of a greenwood shrub was this, but a heavy bough all in fruit and all in flower. With gold and with amber was she adorned, and “Do you know me now?” she asked.

He bowed. “The Woman of the Woods, for true.”

“You do,” she said.

There were some men, if so one could or would call them, some several fat boys with lustrous eyes and sleek soft flesh, cowering and clustering about the dais. He looked at them one hot flash of a look and they, a-sulk, slunk away, taking care to tote away with them their furs and their sweets and their silky-softy gay array of robes: her loverboys. Ah well. Now he was here. Was it not time? Was it not time? Past time …

And she, as slowly she sank back and down awaiting him, murmured, murmured, murmured low, low, low, “… be sparing of your teeth, your claws, be not swift to crush with your embrace, O Bear, O Bear, O Bear …”

His heart was like a mighty hammer upon a red-hot forge.

He heard the heavy blow and he felt the heat and he dimly saw her lift the stoup of mead for him to drink, as though to give him yet more sweetness and more zeal, as though either would be a-lack; he heard, he heard, he stooped his mouth to take the drink, his eyes did not leave hers, his hands groped for hers, he heard the wild swans and he heard their trumpets and he heard the bugles of the elks and the baying of the wild things abroad and he lifted his head in dread and saw the servants, saw the guards drawing close a-crouch with spears between their legs as though he might not see and he saw her a queen and he saw her as the queen of all the bees and he heard the raging murmur of her workers and her warriors and the faint death moans of her drones and he saw that she knew now that he knew and he dashed her honey-drink to the ground and he turned and struck out and fled and trampled and then he was without, he was outside, he was alone, he was not alone, he sobbed his frustrated lust and he sobbed his pain and he felt the stings and he saw the company of his friends and saw in their eyes relief and grief and saw All-Caller sink away from the distended cheeks of Corm —

“Why let not ye me — ” he panted. “Have I not a right — ?”

And overhead he heard, beyond his reach, the bees, the bees, forever enemy of the bears, forever now to spy upon him, forever. The salmon dies after spawning, the were-salmon, undines; the lover-bee is stung to death, the death of the drone, after mating with the queenbee.
One queen is every queen …

“Be not too fierce against us, Bear,” said Roke, diffident and low, regretful. “Thy weird is not ours, ours is not thine: a merry dallying for us can be death for thee. Thy weird is otherwise, and the time of that for thee is not this … and not yet … not yet.”

• • •

And that night he prepared himself for a dream and in that dream he saw what it was that he must do. Moon-dawn brightened the sky as he awoke and sought in the medicine-bundles for the things of need, and then he left them all wrapped in their pelts and in sleep, and his feet made no sound as they flatly pressed the earth and the grass already wet from the first dew, shining brightly in the light of the moon-maid’s lamp. His eyes scanned grass for long and far and then he saw that heaped-up pile of it which signified his first stop. And he set his snares and he said his spells and he sat in the tree and he watched. And he waited. And he waited, and he watched.

• • •

“All hares are my hares,” she said.

“And one queen does for all queens,” he said.

“You think all ill of me …”

“Persuade me not to …”

She sat, her feet thrust under her again, all in blue. “You sought the hare. You caught the hare. You set free the hare and you sent the hare to me, from you. In what way, then, have you yet to be persuaded?”

“In that way by which you think I think all ill of you.”

“And again will that fey horn come soon a-sounding, to fill your ears with witchery and your eyes with witchery and send you fleeing me with fear and with rage and hate?”

He shook his head, his head all glowing with the drops of night, all glowing in the silver lamp. “He who sounds the horn and all of them lie sleeping still and will not wake till I bid them wake: but that same spell which keeps them sleep also keeps them safe.”

“I desire nothing of them, nor ill nor well do I wish them.”

He looked at her, ageless and cool, serene and without rage and he recollected whence she had come.

“Why have you sent for me?” she asked. “I am not used to being sent for, as well you must know.”

Arnten said, “Clearly I cannot go to you with the same safety by which you came to me. It was not to glee myself with the thought of, ‘Ah, and though she be whom she be, yet I did but send and she did come to me.’ ”

She said, “I know.”

And so he knew that she did and he knew then that there was no need for any speech but the flat truth which lies at the base of all things without exception, in some cases to support them and in others to destroy them. And so he came somewhat closer and looked upon her grave beauty and he said, “I had begun to be the true me when I fled away from my childhood. And when I gained me the companions whom I now have, then I thought that they were also for me. And now increasingly I feel that they are for a something of which I am only a part, and this late time it has been seen by me that it is not enough. I feel like one dancing on a rope while a drum or tambour is tapped and rattled: though all look at him and though all laugh and applaud and though one who has never seen the sight may think that the Bear does dance because it is his wish, yet it is not so. And I have sent for you to see if we cannot cut this rope. For you in your way are also tied at a rope.”

She said, “Yes.”

She said, “And now I do see that it is one rope which ties us and which yet has kept us apart. Young for your father was I, and old for you be I: yet perhaps in neither case it need be so. He was much. He was great. Also, he was stubborn, he could not be moved more than can be moved some great stone boulder. Because you are younger you may be supple if you choose. I said to him, ‘We do not need to stay and struggle. I have those ships of which you know and they have rich cargoes of which you know and they be at rest in that portlet and harbor of which you know. Let us twain depart and delight together and visit that other world which lies beyond Thule across the all-circling sea.’ And he said: ‘Delight indeed would that be. But my true delight will be to slay that wolf.’ — Feel you so?”

He looked deep, deep into her eyes, said, “No.” Said, “I cared nothing for that wolf, save that he stood between me and my life. Then my father’s death … But now of this late time I know that more important to me than my father’s death is his son’s life. And so it is that I have come to see that I may well have another life than this one of hunt and flee, of hide and sleep, of seek to slay. Now, and if I stripped that wolf’s skin from off him. Now, and if I became King of Farthest Thule in the stead of him. Now, and of whom would I be king? Of them that stoned me, of them that bound me, of all them, being them who are as I am in any case at all. Ah, and I am plain man enough to think twould be delight to punish them and all of that. But not forever. Not even for long.

“And as regards my friends, are they friends of me indeed? Or of my magic? If I am to be me indeed, and only that, then I am not able to continue being my father’s son and being one who is ever to be summoned by my father’s horn. Perhaps summoned from peril; true. But perhaps I could by myself defeat that peril.

“Woman!” His voice rang in the silent circle lit by the glimmering moon-maid’s lamplight. “Hare!”

She was as cool, serene, as the moon-maid herself. Then as he watched her she grew less so. Her face moved as a true woman’s face moves, and changes, and her head sank upon her breast and then she lifted her head again and he saw her tears. “Woman!” she said, in a voice which trembled. “It is long since I have been woman …”

He took her arms in his hands and said, his voice low but rough and strong. “You will be woman now. And I will be man.”

And he saw her as a woman only, and never as a queen, and he saw her as a woman only, and never as a hare. She changed, but she did not change to that. Her body was all silver, naked in the moonlight, but her voice in his ear was all gold. Without, she glimmered like silver; within, she flowed like molten gold. She moved beneath him and he moved upon her and they filled and they encompassed one another. In a way it was like entering the bear-death and in all other ways it was nothing like that and nothing like anything else. The sun rose with her and within him and wheeled about in fiery light and the voice he heard in his ears was mightier than any voice of All-Caller. And he was himself and all for himself, as he was all for her, as she was all for him: as no one and as nothing had ever been before.

Later, as he kissed her ears and eyes, her lips and breasts and belly, he thought of the old belief that the lovemaking of the bear does last nine days. And he knew this now to be not so. But was withal well content.

They slept the waning night away wrapped in each other’s arms. Dawn found them so, that bride of the locust which does eat up all our days. But no man thinks of that when he is young and in delight of the delights of youth, and it is well that this is so. She did not look old to him in the sunlight, anymore than she had by the shining silver shield of the night. Green was their bed and surrounded by an almost full oval line of trees where a meandering riverlet had transcribed a not-quite-island, along which the deep taproots drank their fill at whatsoever season of the year. Once, at least, the course of the stream had shifted, and left as token of that ancient change a place where there was sand.

“Look you, Arnten,” she said, as he sat up and then got to his feet and walked over to join her; “look you,” she said, beginning to draw in the sand with a sharp broken stick. “Here is where we are, in this little oval. And” — she raised her ivory hand and the wand in it and moved it a distance and dipped it and drew another line, and this one with an indentation — “this is the safe harbor of which I spoke, by the all-circling sea. And this stream here” — she gestured — “leads into another, and this …” she paused in her speech but her hand flew swiftly, deftly, surely.

• • •

Mered-delfin endeavored almost desperately to show the king, by means of signs which he scratched and lines which he drew. But the king, weak, the king, weary, the king so wan of hope and spent — it seemed — of wit, the king could not follow. The chief witcherer, his face drawn taut as a drumhead by pain and wasting illness, Mered-delfin made squawking noises in his throat and chest, he made buzzing sounds with his thin, parched lips.