Part 17 (1/2)

'Is this the way Lord Authun went about it?' said Vali. Jodis seemed confident how to perform the ritual but Vali's nervousness made him look for rea.s.surance.

'He offered a dedication to Odin before he went in,' said Orri.

Vali smiled. 'Well then, since I'm bound, perhaps I should offer a dedication to a bound G.o.d. Lord Loki, who the G.o.ds tormented, guide me to the vision I need.'

'You shouldn't invoke that fellow, lord,' said Orri.

'Is Odin any more reliable?'

'Nor him,' said Orri. 'Freyr for a f.u.c.k, Tyr for a fight and Thor for a f.u.c.k, a fight and the rain to wash you afterwards - you don't need any more G.o.ds than that.'

'Odin is the G.o.d of kings,' said Vali, 'isn't that what we're told?'

'And berserk madmen,' said Orri. 'Sorry, sir, but it's true. When I go into a sc.r.a.p I want to know my G.o.d's on my side, not likely to desert me if the fancy takes him. Odin is a treacherous G.o.d; it is in his nature. I respect Lord Odin, and his kings and lunatics, but I wouldn't call on him, or the other one you mentioned.'

Orri wound the rope around Vali's feet.

'Loki is an enemy of the G.o.ds, not of people,' said Vali. 'When did you ever hear of him acting against men? He kills giants, he kills G.o.ds, but men he helps or leaves alone.'

Jodis spoke: 'This is Odin's ceremony. He's lord of the hanged, the G.o.d who gave his eye for wisdom in the waters of the well. If you want help, it's him you'll call for. If you don't now, you will when you're in there, believe me.'

She put the noose over his neck.

'I've sworn never to ask that G.o.d for anything,' said Vali.

'You will ask or you will die,' said Jodis.

She adjusted the rope at his neck, almost like she would straighten her child's tunic before allowing him to go to market. 'Let's hope we don't need this. Stay away from dark things,' she said. 'Only speak to the G.o.d himself.'

'How will I know the difference?' said Vali.

'I have no idea,' said Jodis. 'Magic is a puzzle not a recipe, so Ma Disa used to say.' Vali nodded. His hands and his feet were secure and he couldn't even balance to stand. She finished adjusting the noose and kissed him on the forehead. 'Take him to the middle of the mire.'

Hogni and Orri lifted him but found him c.u.mbersome to carry between them. In the end Hogni put him over his shoulder and walked across the squelching ground and into the water, Orri in front of him to test the way. In the middle they stopped. Hogni let Vali slide down and supported the prince as he stood precariously. The water was freezing, and it came up to their belts. Vali s.h.i.+vered.

'Should I call for Odin?' said Hogni.

Jodis shook her head.

'The prince should call. You should save your breath. If he comes, you might need it to beg him to leave. Are you ready, Vali?'

'Yes.'

'Put him under and hold him there until I tell you to bring him up,' said Jodis. 'Hogni, hold him down; Orri, keep hold of the rope. And both of you stand by with your knives. He is going to the gates of Hel, and if something claims him there it can't be allowed to live in this world. This is how the swamp monsters are born.'

The three men glanced at each other.

'If you have to kill me, kill me,' said Vali. 'I won't consider you kinslayers - Ma Jodis is a witness to that.'

'Then sit down, lord,' said Hogni.

The first time was the easiest. Vali just let his legs go soft and leaned back into the mire as if into the sea on a summer's day. He closed his eyes and did not see the dark waters close over him. The panic kept away for a few heartbeats. At first it was as if he was not himself but an observer - the danger of his situation was not clear and he still thought he could just stand up. Then fear broke over him like a wave. He desperately needed air. He tried to stand, and when he couldn't, he tried to sit up. Someone had a boot on the centre of his chest. He could hear distorted voices from the surface and had to resist the desire to cry out to them. He wriggled free of the foot, tried to get onto his knees and then felt a push at his side. It turned him over. Someone was pulling at his hands, then they were kneeling or sitting on him, he couldn't tell which. Hogni and Orri were doing what they had promised - helping him to stay below the water.

He struggled to hold his breath. Dread overwhelmed him, he felt that he was drowning in fear as much as water. The bonds would not come off, the weight on his back and on his legs felt immense, almost part of him, as if he were some enormous giant too heavy to lift itself.

He couldn't get the ropes off, couldn't get free. Vali tried to remember that he had chosen to be here, that he wanted this, but it was no good. An instinct, animal and undeniable, rose up in him and he fought for the surface. He opened his eyes to look for the light and could see no more in the muddy waters than when they were closed. Then his will burst and he breathed in. He spat and coughed and then felt his throat clench shut. He had the desire to move his body but he could no longer do so, though he was kicking with his mind. His longing for the air seemed like something trapped in his head, thumping to get free. Still he struggled, the panic swamping even the emotions of despair.

Then, as suddenly as it had come on, the terror was gone and he felt peaceful, as if any cares he had, any frustrations and fears, were just silly things, almost incomprehensible under the calm that came down on him like a parent's kiss on a sleepy child.

Light. And noise, hard blows and a sensation of movement. The gra.s.s felt cold. Someone was slapping him across the back of the head. He tried to defend himself but his hands were tied. A face came into focus. It was Jodis.

'Nothing?' she said.

Vali coughed, spluttering out water and mucus from his nose and mouth.

'Nothing.'

'Do you need a rest?'

Vali thought of Adisla, of what she would be enduring on the Danes' drakkar. 'No rest,' he said. He could hardly get the words out. His throat was dry and sore from where it had constricted in the water and his muscles writhed on his bones in a deep s.h.i.+ver.

'Put him back,' said Jodis.

Time became flexible to Vali, a malleable thing, like a piece of hide to be stretched or shrunk, a smith's ingot heated and cooled, bent and straightened. When he was in the water every heartbeat seemed a year. When he was out the sun seemed to dip and rise like a skimmed stone. Even though his will was strong, Vali couldn't help but take rests. At first they untied him when he did so. Eventually they did not. He could say, 'Put me back in the water,' but he couldn't make his body allow it, and the more times he went in, the harder he struggled. At first he could control himself until he reached the centre of the mire. After a day he began to fight as they led him to the edge. It was a place of horror to him now, though no visions came, no insight or revelation, just the awful black water closing in on him, the pressures from within as the air struggled to burst from his lungs, and without as the water rushed to get in. A weighty black ma.s.s seemed to pull at his brain, heavier on the left than the right, the asymmetry giving him a headache like he had never known. His throat was raw and he could hardly speak.

There was no crowd there to see the magic. The Danes had gone and the Rygir were at home, sitting in groups remembering the dead, tending the wounded or just keeping their children close and the door shut. Adisla was the only one taken but ten others had died and still more were wounded. People drank, though not in celebration, hoping to damp down the misery and accentuate the glory of the violent day. Only Jodis's children and Bragi came to watch Vali suffer.

Jodis sent her girl away to bring soup, but Vali couldn't drink it. His throat had clamped shut, so he s.h.i.+vered out the interludes between his ordeals starving and cold. On the first day he managed twelve trips to the water. On the second he did four. The third day, lack of sleep blunting the reality of what he was doing, he managed eight. And, towards the evening, he did begin to see.

Drowning beneath the dark waters, he was somewhere else other than the mire, somewhere equally cold but not wet or dark. At that turning point, the moment between the panic and the calm of drowning, he was in a confined s.p.a.ce, a tunnel that seemed to glow, the rocks emitting a soft and alien light. Someone was there, he was sure, though he couldn't say who. He could feel their presence as a tone, a mood or a pattern of thought. He had never known anything like it. It was a mind that seemed like a river - always moving, always the same - and, like a river, it had currents that might drag you down.

And when he was lifted from the water, he didn't see Orri and Hogni but that strange red-haired man in the cloak of hawk feathers, taking him up and out into the clean cold air. He heard a voice that seemed familiar.

'Give yourself completely.' Then the man was gone and Vali could stand it no more. He knew what was required. You cannot go to the gates of death if you are still looking back at life. He needed to step forward boldly. The idea didn't come to him in words but as a feeling of want, like a prisoner wants freedom. He was fettered by something and the fetters needed to break.

The men pulled him up and he lay back in their arms, limp as pondweed.

'Lord,' said Orri, 'you have tried. There is nothing there for you.'

'No,' said Vali, though the word was more of a cough than anything understandable. The men started towards the bank.

'No.'

They stopped.