Land of the Silver Dragon Read online

  I wondered if I should tell him the truth, and decided there was no reason not to. ‘I thought you’d somehow shut yourself in down there, with no means of escape,’ I muttered. ‘I was terrified because I thought it was up to me to get you out, and I had no idea how to do it.’

  There was dead silence. Then he said, ‘It would have distressed you, then, if old Gurdyman had carelessly managed to bring about his own demise?’

  He was trying not to smile, but I saw no humour whatsoever in the situation. Rounding on him, tears pricking behind my eyelids, I cried, ‘Of course it would have distressed me! I really, really like you!’

  It was a silly thing to say; the sort of thing a child would blurt out. I was already framing an apology, but then I caught the fleeting expression in his blue eyes.

  He was touched. Very touched.

  I wondered how long it was since anyone had told him they cared for him.

  We were both embarrassed now. He was the first to recover. Taking my arm, he stepped back into the entrance to the passage and said briskly, ‘See, child, how the door is fastened, flat against the wall? You don’t notice it unless you know it’s there.’ He undid the restraint, closing the door again, with us on the crypt side. ‘Now, from the other side it is as you just saw it: invisible. It is made of stout, thick oak, as you can see, and its outer side is covered with a thin facing of the same stones that form the wall. It blends in, do you see? And it can only be opened from this side.’ He demonstrated.

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘I can see how very effective it is, but why is it necessary?’

  He frowned in concentration, as if the answer to my question needed thought. Then he said, ‘Do you remember, Lassair, that I once told you this old house of mine holds many secrets?’ I nodded; it’s something not easy to forget, if you’re actually living in the house in question. ‘You will, I am sure, have noticed the peculiar layout.’

  ‘You mean the way the crypt isn’t actually beneath the house?’

  ‘Exactly,’ he said, beaming. ‘I thought you’d have spotted that,’ he muttered. ‘I cannot claim to have designed that feature myself,’ he went on, ‘for the house and its neighbours had stood here for many lifetimes before I took up residence. However, there came a moment when the opportunity arose for me to – ah – acquire the crypt beneath the house to our right –’ he waved his arm to indicate – ‘and I did not hesitate. That dwelling was then temporarily vacant, and I was able to ensure it remained so while the modifications were carried out. My house, as you no doubt realize, fits in between its neighbours like a serpent weaving its way between rocks.’

  It was not a description I liked – not for this house I’d come to love – and, besides, I was not primarily concerned with the how; what I was still burning to know was why. ‘So, you created access to a secret crypt that can be totally hidden from within your house,’ I summarized. ‘For what purpose?’

  He looked slightly impatient. ‘Why do you think, Lassair? You have been with me down there in the crypt; you have observed me working. Can you not see why it might be necessary to hide both the crypt and the work?’

  I could; of course I could. ‘And also the wi— the person doing the work,’ I added quietly. I’d almost said wizard, but I wasn’t at all sure he’d like the epithet. Not on my lips, anyway, although I had heard him refer to himself thus, usually with a self-mocking smile.

  ‘Quite so,’ he murmured. He glanced at me, looked away and then met my eyes again. I guessed he was unsure about whether to say what was on his mind. Eventually he did. ‘There have been times when I have offended people,’ he said, with obvious reluctance. ‘On occasions, men of power have resented my ... er, things I have done.’ I opened my mouth to ask what sort of things, but he hurried on, not allowing me to speak. ‘It has proved useful, on more than one occasion, to have a safe place in which to hide while the storm wore itself out above me.’ Suddenly he grabbed my arm, turned me round, hurried me back along the passage and said, ‘But we have spent quite long enough on the secrets of my house, Lassair. It is time to get to work!’

  Gurdyman never acts without a reason. It was only later that I wondered why he had chosen that particular morning to show me his house’s hiding place.

  We settled in the little courtyard, sitting either side of a trestle table on which Gurdyman proceeded to spread a huge sheet of parchment. Fairly soon I recognized what was inscribed on it, although the work was a great deal more advanced than when I had seen it before. Now, the surface was covered in blocks of small, neat lettering and tiny, vivid pictures, illustrating dwellings, palaces, churches, trees, flowers, rivers, and even, on a big expanse covered with ripples that I assumed to be the sea, a ship with a square sail and an imaginative sea monster blowing a huge spout of water from its mouth.

  Hrype had been there, that day when I first saw the parchment; it was the day he first introduced me to Gurdyman. He had explained to me what Gurdyman had been trying to do, which was no more and no less than making a visual representation of the voyages of his ancient Norse ancestors. I hadn’t really understood then, when the manuscript was in its early stages. Now that it was nearing completion – if the fact that almost the entire surface of the parchment was covered in pictures, writing or both was any guide – I knew I was going to need some help.

  Side by side, Gurdyman and I sat staring down at the manuscript. I remembered how, on that first visit, he’d asked me to try to draw the journey I’d just made from Aelf Fen to Cambridge, and all I’d managed was some rudimentary sketches of trees and barns and a feeble, wandering line that ran off the edge of the parchment long before it got to my village. Now I said, ‘I think I understand what you’re trying to do, but I’m afraid this –’ I waved a hand over the entire parchment – ‘doesn’t really mean anything to me.’

  ‘No reason why it should,’ he replied. He drew a breath, held it and then said, ‘I am not the only man attempting to map the world, Lassair.’ Map. I memorized the word. ‘Men of the Church are working on it, although from what I have seen and heard of their travail, their faith is the driving force, and Jerusalem is always presented as the world’s centre: its navel, if you like, for the Greeks used the word omphalos, meaning the same thing. Not that their world’s navel was the Christians’ Jerusalem, of course, but Delphi,’ he added, half to himself. ‘But I digress. This map –’ he put his fingertips delicately on to his own beautiful work – ‘represents a different aspect of the world; or, more accurately, the world viewed without the bias of faith. Here is the land, and here are the surrounding seas.’ He indicated first a large, amorphous shape covered with pictures and writing, and then the rippled area I’d already identified as water. ‘See these ships?’ Once more he pointed, and, now that I was looking more closely, I saw that the same little images of square-sailed ships were dotted all over the manuscript.

  ‘Yes,’ I breathed.

  ‘Behold the voyages of the Norsemen,’ he said eagerly, excitement thrumming in his voice. ‘Into the north and the west they went, heading out on the wide ocean that has no end.’ The left-hand edge of the map, indeed, ended in a mass of ripples, gradually decreasing in size. ‘Down into the great land mass that lies to the south and the east, those long, narrow boats edging ever onwards down the great rivers until finally emerging into seas very different from those that we know in the north. One such voyage led to Miklagard, their Great City,’ he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. I thought for a moment he was going to elucidate; explain, perhaps, that strange name. Miklagard, I repeated silently. But, with a shake of his shoulders, he went on in a different direction. ‘So many miles they travelled, pushing on, on, into strange lands where unknown trees and flowers flourished, where unlikely animals thrived, where a man’s very skin was of a different hue.’

  ‘What drove them on?’ I whispered. It was all but unimaginable, to think of those men in their frail boats, so far from home, voyaging into the unknown.

  ‘Trade, for the most pa
rt,’ Gurdyman said, grinning as my face fell in disappointment. ‘Trade, or the need to find new lands to live in. I am sorry to give you so prosaic an answer, child, but we must always face the truth, even when it is not what we had hoped it would be.’

  A memory surfaced. ‘Hrype’s rune stones!’ I exclaimed, remembering.

  Gurdyman looked at me approvingly. ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘They were fashioned from the translucent green stone that is brought out of the east.’ He grabbed a fold of the glorious, heavy silk shawl that he always wore and thrust it at me. ‘This, too, reached my hands only after a very long journey. The fabric is precious, Lassair, and silk of this quality is reserved for great kings and emperors.’ He smoothed the shawl delicately, his fingers hovering over the image of a magnificent and surely imaginary bird, with a brilliant blue head and a great fan of tail feathers that seemed to be dotted with eyes. Elsewhere, set against the same dark red background, flowers, leaves and lithe little creatures like weasels flowed together in an intricate pattern. ‘One of my own forebears brought home this shawl. It cost him dear, for in exchange he had to part with a lot more of his skins than he would have liked. But, you see, he fell in love with it, and from the instant he set eyes on it, he knew he had to have it.’ He looked down fondly at the shawl. ‘He brought it for his sister, my mother, whom he dearly loved,’ he added softly, ‘because she was barren and he wished to bring the smile back to her face.’

  ‘But she can’t have been barren because ...’ I began. Then I stopped, because I recalled what he had once told me: My mother was advanced in years, and my birth was treated as a miracle.

  Gurdyman acted as if he hadn’t heard. ‘There is a great road that stretches for thousands of miles,’ he began, his face dreamy, ‘and along it pass caravans of merchants, their pack animals laden with the treasures of the east. They travel westwards, and the traders of the west journey eastwards to meet them, and where the two converge there is a great city on the water. It is a city of graceful towers and warm, honey-coloured stonework, and it is riven by a stretch of water where the tides rip through as fast as a galloping horse. There, where men go to trade the greatest treasures of East and West, there are markets so vibrant, so thrilling, that all are reluctant to waste their time in sleep.’

  I tried to imagine such a place. I failed. The biggest town I knew was Cambridge, and, although we undoubtedly had our share of merchants from near and far, I hadn’t noticed anyone here being all that reluctant to retire at nightfall.

  With a start, Gurdyman came out of his reverie. ‘Enough,’ he said. ‘It is time to begin our lesson.’

  Having aroused my curiosity by showing me his map, Gurdyman seized the moment and leapt straight into explaining how the Norsemen had succeeded not only in discovering the routes to the far-flung places they visited but, perhaps even more importantly, had managed to find their way home again.

  ‘They had faith in their ships,’ he said, ‘those light, sure-footed vessels that were sufficiently shallow-drafted that they did not run aground as they traversed the great river routes. Under sail, the ships were so fast that they seemed to skim over the waves. When the wind failed, the mariners removed the mast to prevent wind resistance and set to at the oars.’

  It seemed to me, listening, that Gurdyman must surely have been speaking from personal experience. At what point in his long and eventful life, I wondered, had he sailed with the Norsemen? And how had he come by all this knowledge? He had told me once that he studied with the Moors of Spain when he was a youth, but today’s lesson concerned the wisdom of a very different sort of people ...

  What he told me next sounded like magic.

  He had been describing the ways by which the Norsemen navigated, and much of it was based on sound common sense. Sailing close in to shore, a mariner would look out for familiar landmarks, noting them in sequence, much as I had tried to illustrate my pathetic little attempt at indicating the way home to Aelf Fen by drawing a particular tree, stream or cottage. The mariners also used the Pole Star to steer by; that, too, was familiar, for one of my earliest childhood lessons was how to locate the bright star that lies where the Pointers indicate. If you know where North lies, my father had explained, you can find your way. It’s very easy to become lost in the fens, where it’s often misty and where the land and the water are constantly changing. All fen children learn young how to find the Pole Star. If you’re lost out on the fens overnight and nobody finds you, you’ll likely be dead by morning.

  Gurdyman told me of other ways in which the Norse mariners had used the world around them to navigate. Over many generations of observation, they built up a knowledge of the winds: if it was warm and wet, it blew from the south-west; if it was cold and wet, from the north-east. They learned to utilize the length of daylight as an indicator of how far north they were. They observed bird behaviour. They studied the tides. There was more, much more, and it was all based on sound common sense.

  Then Gurdyman’s voice changed – I know it did, I heard it – and he moved on to tell me of things that were nothing to do with common sense at all.

  ‘The Norse ships frequently carried a dragon’s head,’ he said. Fleetingly an image formed in my mind – something I had seen, in a dream, perhaps? Then it was gone. ‘But the dragon was a creature of the sea,’ Gurdyman went on, ‘and drew his power from the water element. Approaching land, the figurehead had to be removed, for the people on the shore feared that the mighty dragon would offend the good spirits of the earth.’ He leaned closer. ‘The mariners believed a ship found her own way home,’ he said, very softly. ‘Their skills helped, of course, but ultimately it was up to the craft herself, and a powerful dragon’s head on the prow would cleave a way through the mists, the storms, the flooding tide and the howling winds and bring the ship safe to port.’

  Then the fleeting image clarified.

  I saw a ship. It was a long, sleek craft, flying through the spray and the wave-tops like an arrow shot from a bow. Her square sail was stretched taught with the wind that drove her, and the dragon on her prow breathed flame and smoke from its flared nostrils. The dragon – or perhaps it was the ship – spoke a name: Malice-striker.

  I became aware of Gurdyman’s voice. It seemed he spoke more loudly, as if calling me back from wherever it was I had strayed. It seemed that now he was quoting the words of someone else; perhaps from one of the sagas of long ago.

  ‘... and the heavens were heavy with snow-bearing cloud,’ he intoned. ‘The king sent his men to search the skies for a clear patch, so that they might see the Sun and note his position, but no break in the clouds was to be found. Then the king summoned his steersman, and commanded him to tell him where the Sun was, and the steersman took his stone, and, putting it to his eye, stared up at the angry skies. Then, lo!, through the power of the sunstone he could see wherefrom came the Sun’s light. Bowing to the king, he said, Behold, Lord, the invisible Sun is no longer hidden, and he indicated to the king where the Sun rode, high above the snow clouds.’

  I was there. I was standing beside the king – a tall, broad, burly figure; bearded, a gold circlet on his long hair, wrapped in heavy furs – and I felt his power and his majesty coming off him like the heat from a fire. I saw his steersman, kneeling before him; in his hands he held a square-cut crystal, translucent, softly shining. A deep voice said, solstenen.

  ‘Sunstone,’ I whispered.

  I felt strange. My head was light, as if I hadn’t eaten for a long time. I stared around the familiar little courtyard, but it seemed to be obscured by a wet, cold mist that swirled up out of some unknown, dread source.

  Through the mist I thought I heard Gurdyman’s voice; at least, I believed it was his. The voice spoke of a talisman; an object so sacred, so secret, that few even suspected its existence. It came from far away and its powers were legion.

  Its powers were terrifying.

  It sharpened inner sight; it both permitted entry to the unknown realms and provided protection from the
ir perils. It gave access to ...

  Abruptly the voice ceased, as if a thick, heavy door had been closed on the speaker. My head spun and, although I tried to cry out, I was dumb. Then I fell forward on to the table, my head cushioned by my arms, and everything went dark.

  Gurdyman sent me to bed early. It was, I suppose, a way of acknowledging that he might have pushed me a bit too far in the day’s instruction. While I’m delighted that he treats me not as a fragile female but as someone desperate to learn and ready for any challenge, at times I feel it would be nice if he remembered that we aren’t all as tough and experienced as he is. In fact, I doubt if anyone is, with the exception of Hrype.

  I hadn’t wanted to eat, but Gurdyman insisted I cleared my bowl of stew before I went up the ladder to my room. When, at last, I took off my boots and my over gown and lay beneath the covers, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep almost immediately.

  I am dreaming. I see a tall, broad, burly figure, no more than a dark outline, on the edge of vision. When I turn to face it – him – there’s nothing there.

  I’m in a long, narrow passage. Outside? Within a building? There is no way of knowing. I look up, searching for a ceiling or the night sky, but all I can see is darkness. Whatever is hunting for me is right behind me. I spin round to look and I can’t make it out. I sense hands, long-fingered, reaching out for me. The flesh of my back chills and contracts, as if in terrified anticipation of the touch that must surely come. Suddenly I hear a noise ... it’s a thin, whistling sound, almost like a signal ... one predator calling to another?

  I stifle a moan. They must not know I am there. But then I hear a series of slow thumps, very near.

  They have found me.

  Then I am thrust abruptly into wakefulness.

  Gurdyman was bending over me, his laboured, whistling breathing loud in my ear. He said, very softly, ‘Get out of bed, Lassair, and come with me. We must hide.’

  I did as he commanded, grabbing my shawl off the bed and wrapping it tightly round me. Gurdyman preceded me down the ladder, puffing hard, his feet making the thump I had heard in my dream. In a moment of perception, I realized then why it is he was happy to let me sleep in the room that was once his: it was becoming just too much of a struggle for him to climb up there.