CHAPTER TWELVE
Quick Blood

1

Before . . .

“I don’t understand,” said Freya. “What should we be looking at?”

“A vast underground lake, nearly big enough to be called a sea—its surface completely smooth and still, for no creature stirs it, nor the slightest breeze moves across it. But not this—this dark emptiness!”

Swiðgar took several steps forward and descended down a sand-and-stone slope, which ended after several feet in a flat, black, dry, cracked mud floor. “It’s gone. The Slæpismere is gone!” he exclaimed in a harsh whisper.

“What does that mean?” Freya asked.

“It means that the hidden world is already feeling the affect of evil spreading in this land,” Swiðgar answered. “They have already started claiming victories—decay has set in. This is why our task is of such import.”

“What’s that?” asked Daniel, pointing along the dry bank. There was some sort of wall that extended into the empty lake. They walked over and investigated.

“It is a pier,” said Ecgbryt as their torches revealed it more in detail. On the far end, several wide, flat-bottomed boats dangled lengthways from a chain that was still attached to a metal pillar. Swiðgar gave one of them a push and it gave a couple tragicomic swings before scraping to a halt.

“Well, let’s get started,” said Ecgbryt. “We must go on if we are to keep the pace.”

Walking along the dry lake bed was much easier than picking their way along the rocky tunnels now above them. The ground was basically flat, sloping gently downwards.

“Did I ever tell you,” said Ecgbryt, “of the fight we had with the Danes off the Isle of Wight? A glorious battle! I arrived in one of the nine new ships built in the Northman’s fashion that Ælfred ordered built, along with many of the Frisian warriors that fought with us on that occasion. Have I ever told you about the fearsome Frisians? Are they still as famed in this day as they were in ours? I remember a ballad about them that starts thus . . .”

Ecgbryt recited his ballad and then continued his long monologue about his battle and almost every ballad he knew relating to it. It soothed them all to listen, and Ecgbryt to talk. When he stopped they took a break to rest, and that’s when Daniel, moving away from the torchlight to relieve himself, noticed a light shining up ahead.

“Does anybody else see that?” he asked.

“I think that it’s on top of something,” Freya said. “I think that there’s a hill up ahead.”

They had been walking an upward slope after having journeyed quite a long way down into the dry lake bed. “No, not a hill,” Ecgbryt said. “Not a hill exactly—it’s an island!”

2

The weary travelers circled the dry island to find an easy way up that didn’t involve scaling sharp rocks and boulders. The ground underfoot crunched and shifted as they came upon a stretch of land made up of loose stones and gravel. In their own torchlight, they could see that this created a kind of ramp-like path up towards the island. “It’s a beach,” Freya said, laughing slightly. “Or at least, it used to be.”

They mounted the top of the ramp on an ascent of fine, powdery sand. The light was stronger and grew from a point just below a small rise.

“Shh!” hissed Daniel. “Listen!”

They all heard the singing now; many voices in chorus— melodic, but indistinct. It sounded strange to them, after all this time of walking in the silent dark, but there it was. They proceeded up the rise, alert, ready for nearly anything.

But they weren’t prepared for the smell. It was a homely smell of warm food and wood smoke—some sort of stew, at a guess. The singing had given way to an amiable chatter. The travelers rounded the mound, drawing closer, and Freya immediately wondered if it might all be some sort of illusion meant to confuse them, for as they came around the base of the mound, they saw a group of people sitting around a large fire, their hands moving vigorously in industrious work.

Creeping closer, Freya counted eight women, all of them ancient, sitting in a circle around a modest campfire, working on a long piece of grey patterned cloth spread across their laps. At one end, two old ladies worked spinning machines—turning a large pile of thin, wispy material into spools of thread, which were placed onto a loom that was operated by two others. This loom spewed a fine fabric from its top that was gathered by another who stretched and pulled the cloth. The cloth then crossed the laps of two other women, who placed the woven fabric into large embroidery frames where they added borders of an elaborate swirling pattern. The finished cloth then entered a large stack of long rolls that were piled behind the group. Because of the darkness, Freya couldn’t make out how many rolls of cloth there were, but she had the impression of quite a large number, as its production had apparently been going on for some time.

The last old lady flitted around the others to help—toting spools to the loom, fixing the frames in different places, and doing whatever else needed doing. She also paused occasionally to stir the large pot on the fire at the centre of the circle.

Freya and Daniel and the knights watched in silence for a few moments and then entered the circle of light cast by the fire. They stood between the weaving machine and the embroiderers. Freya felt a tingle of anticipation as she drew breath to speak.

“Hello,” she said.

All of them continued, oblivious, except for the old woman at the large pot. She stopped stirring and turned towards them. “Well, hello there, sweet child,” she replied. “Where did you spring from?”

“Um, we’ve been traveling. We saw the light and came here.

We thought you might be able to help us.”

“Who’s ‘us,’ deary? Who is ‘we’?”

“My friends and I. We—oh!”

The old woman tilted her face so that the light from the fire fell on it more directly. Her eye sockets were empty and puckered— blind. Glancing quickly at the others, she could see that all of the women were blind. Haltingly, nervously, Freya introduced herself and the rest of the group to the weaving women.

“Very pleased to meet you, I’m sure,” said the old lady. “Now, I must ask you an important question. Think carefully before you answer: would you or would you not like to have some good, hot stew?”

Freya grinned. “Yes, please,” she said.

“I can hear your smile,” the old woman said. “I daresay you have answered correctly. Come then, all of you. Come get some eats!”

“Freya,” Daniel whispered, “I’m not sure that we should.” He looked cautiously around at the group of ladies. Although they had not stopped working, it was obvious that they were all paying attention to what was going on. “Not until we find out—you know—if they can be trusted or not.”

“Young boy—Daniel, is it? What is there to worry about? Why not trust us? What reason is there for suspicion?”

“Well, for a start, you know my name. Who are you, and what are you doing here?” he asked.

“Weaving, my dear, weaving.”

“Why?”

“There must always be weavers—and gatherers, and combers, and spinners as well. It is the way of humanity. The first thing that man understood when he knew things as God knew them was that there must be weaving. And so here we are. We weave.”

“But—what is it?”

The old woman smiled, showing a full mouth of healthy white teeth. “All the known and unknown stories of the world may be told through our tapestry. We roll up the past, weave the present, and spin the strands of the future. It’s all one to us.”

“But you can’t see,” Daniel blurted.

The old woman waved a wrinkled hand. “Don’t need to bother with that no more. Gets in the way more often than not. All we have to do is feel and then move our hands. Now, are you satisfied enough to chance a taste of my stew?”

“I would,” said Ecgbryt, pushing his way into the circle.

“As would I,” said Swiðgar behind him, “and thank you for your generosity.”

Daniel said nothing but followed the knights and Freya and stood in front of the big pot. Smiling, the old lady gathered up some clay bowls and spoons that were lying on a low stone table nearby.

“My, you’re a strong thread, aren’t you? You and the girl both. Such a shame though . . .”

“What?”

“Well, in tough times, when the fabric wears thin and weaker threads break, the stronger threads have to pick up the slack.”

Daniel frowned as he was handed a bowl of steaming stew.

“So, can you predict the future?” Freya asked. “Because of your weaving?”

“Oh no,” said the woman. “None see the future. But when you’ve lived as long as I, you get to know the pattern. All the threads follow their own paths, but each is affected by those around them. Each strand is small in itself, but all are great together. A very many threads seen together will give you a pattern or a shape, but even that will only be small in the larger work.” She spooned up another bowl and passed it to Freya. “The threads go here and there and make all manner of twists and turns, but it is always to a purpose, though it may not seem that way to the thread. To the thread all that happens feels accidental, but those as sees more, knows better.”

“So the threads can’t decide where they go? Or choose what part of pattern they’re in?”

“No, of course not,” said the woman lightly. “How could they?

They’re only threads, not people.” She handed the last bowls to Swiðgar and Ecgbryt.

None of the other weavers had stopped working during this exchange. Freya eyed the rolls of fabric. “How long have you been here?” she asked.

“Oh, year unknown upon year innumerable,” came the reply.

“Have you ever tried to leave?”

“Where is there to go?”

“Where do you get the stuff to weave with?” asked Daniel.

“Worms. Little worms. We are provided for. We don’t ask for much. Even the meat for the stew comes to us freely.”

Luckily, Daniel and Freya had already eaten a couple mouthfuls of the chunky broth and it tasted good enough to keep them from imagining what they were eating. Whatever it was, it tasted so incredibly good that they didn’t want to stop eating. The warmth of the food started in their stomachs and spread to their arms and legs.

“Yes, all manner of things that you wouldn’t dream of managin’ to fetch up here,” the old woman continued. “You could hardly credit it. All sorts of unimaginable persons and beasts and creatures . . .” Her voice was starting to drone. Daniel’s and Freya’s hands felt hot and heavy and a couple of sizes too big. Daniel felt himself rocking backwards as Freya began tilting forwards. She wondered if she should stop herself falling asleep but couldn’t think of a reason why. It would feel so nice to lie down on the floor and rest.

As Daniel quietly collapsed, he managed to loll his head around to look at Swiðgar and Ecgbryt. They were still awake, but obliviously spooning stew into their mouths. Daniel’s eyes closed—or at least he thought that they did. He felt himself spinning downwards even though he knew he wasn’t moving, and he slept.

3

Freya woke up with a start. The first thing she was aware of was an odd rhythmic pounding sensation that went through her skull. It took her a few seconds to discover that the pounding was coming from outside her head rather than from the inside. Then she was able to discern chanting above the pounding. The ladies were reciting a work-song. They punctuated its melodic style with stamps of their feet and scrapes and clacks of whatever machine or tool they were using.

“A Brownie takes milk,
takes milk,
Takes milk.
A Brownie takes milk, takes milk.

“Oh, a child will do for a Faerie or Elf,
A Pixie, or Kobold, or Hob.
They will bear it away, to their home in the hills,
And replace it with a small changeling sprite.
But they cannot bide iron, so make you a crib
Out of oak—with nine strong four-inch nails.
And hang up a horseshoe over window and door,
And the imps will as like pass you by,
Wist I,
That the imps will as like pass you by.

“But a Brownie takes milk, will take milk.
Only milk.

Yes, a Brownie takes milk; it takes milk.

“A Troll will want teeth, but will settle for toenails
By the bushel, the yard, or the pound.
And a Giant wants bones he can grind into meal
To make bread for his mother to eat.
Though these beasts are enormous, you will find them
quite slow
At a riddle, a sonnet, or verse.

“They will tear out their hair and will scratch up their face,
But an answer they will give you none, not one!

No, an answer they can give you none.

“And a Brownie will only take milk.
Ever milk.

Yes, a Brownie will only take milk.

“A Dragon wants gold it can put in a pile—
Something to stack and to count.
It may take a maiden, a sheep, or a cow
To assuage it and soothe its fierce greed.
It will give you confusion and fire and doubt,
For its forked tongue spouts flame and deceit.
You can kill it with courage and with valor and steel
But its treasure will not bring you health, Or wealth.

No, its treasure will not bring you health.

“But a Brownie will only take milk
From a mother;

From a mother the Brownie takes milk.

There are others like Ghouls and Zombies and Wights,
Who desire your flesh and your skin.
And the merfolk: the Nyads, the Kelpie, and such,
Are jealous of all mortal souls,

“Much like Bog Sprites and Will o’ the Wisps
Who will lead you astray unto death.
They do not have reason or morals, just wit,
So ignore them, and let them pass by, Oh, aye, Just ignore them and they’ll pass you by.

“But a Brownie will only take milk
From a mother
That she uses to suckle her child.

“For a Brownie is patient, and a Brownie is sly—
And no matter how the baby does wriggle or cry—
The Brownie will hide and will watch and drink milk,
And will wait for the poor bairn to die.
So place you some buttermilk fresh from the churn
In a dish by the back kitchen door.
Do this every morning and once Sunday evening
And the Brownie will not grieve you more,
No more, Leave some milk from the churn on the floor.

“For a Brownie takes milk, will take milk.
Does take milk.
Yes, a Brownie takes milk; it takes milk.”

The weaving ladies stopped singing at this last, haunting verse, but continued moving their tools and stomping in time.

“What was that?” Freya asked weakly, sitting up. She had been placed on a pile of animal skins and furs. Her head was swimming slightly and her stomach felt queasy.

“You’re up, deary,” said the woman at the pot. On second glance, she seemed different from the one who had given them the stew, but it was hard to tell.

“You have quick blood,” said the lady as she hobbled blindly towards her. “Here, chew this.” From the folds in her clothes she produced a kind of twisty, stick-like thing about the size of a toothbrush.

“What is it?”

“Birch bark steeped in ginger. It will still your head and stomach. Go on, take it. Take it. You are safe here. The rest did you good, just as it is doing good to your friends there.”

Freya moved her head and saw Daniel and the two knights stretched out beside her, also on skins and furs. They looked peaceful enough. Daniel was curled up on his side and Ecgbryt was snoring. She turned back to the old lady and felt a wave of nausea at the movement. She reached out and took the stick of bark from the woman and stuck it between her teeth.

“Let me help you up,” said the lady. “Try to move around. Take this.” The woman draped a soft, silky shawl over Freya’s shoulders and got her to stand. She directed her towards the fire.

“Quick blood,” repeated the woman. “First down, but first up. Fast thoughts and quick judgments. The waters may appear still on top, but there are faster currents underneath, eh?”

“Are you talking about me?”

“Perhaps not so fast then. Allow me to say to you that it does our hearts good to see one of our sisters on a business such as this—does us all good. Wars are unavoidable—some of them are inevitable—but the real business of life is a woman’s business.”

Freya was still very groggy and her head felt muzzy. She wasn’t taking in much of what the old woman was saying.

“But men always forget that, the dear sweet idiots. Love to fight, bless them, but they too often forget what they’re fighting for. Need one of us to remind them of it, on occasion. One that will make them heed. One to make those who lead go someplace, and one to make those who won’t be led to follow.”

“Are you talking about me?” Freya asked again, starting to feel better. The odd stick was doing its work and settling her system.

“Ah, a little swifter now, eh? Let’s walk. Take my arm.”

They moved away from the camp, Freya guiding the older woman and supporting her by the arm. “So you think I can do this quest sort of thing?” Freya asked when they had crested a ridge and the light from the camp was a pale glow behind them.

“My sweet, you were made for it.”

“Made for it? So do I have a choice?”

“It’s who you are, my dear. You can reject it, but you can’t change it.”

The old lady was silent for a time, which allowed Freya to think about this.

“In your way,” the woman eventually continued, “you are rarer than any of the others. There will always be fighters—lots of fighters. But not many will be able to do what you will be asked to do. The decisions you will face will affect many, many people.”

“Huh. You know,” Freya began thoughtfully, “back on the surface, where I live, it feels like a lot of people think women aren’t as good as men—like we aren’t equal.”

“Of course we aren’t equal, my dear one. We’re much better than they are.”

Freya laughed.

“That was not really in earnest, and also not true. Equal doesn’t really enter into it—we will never be equal because there are too many differences. But we’re the real doers—the real makers. Men work the fields, hunt the animals, and we make the food and cook the meat. They raise the flocks, and we make the clothes.

They provide the house, and we make a home—the children, the family. All the fruits of man’s labor on earth must pass through our hands.”

Freya twirled the stick between her lips. “All the wars,” the woman went on, “all the kickin’ and thumpin’ that’s been done has all been on our account as to make a space for us to do our work. All the kingdoms and walls as has been made has been made to protect us—what’s worth protectin’.”

There was a pause and when the old woman spoke again, her voice was lower and colder. “An evil has been building on these shores for some hundreds of years. It’s been growing all around and creeping in at the edges, slowly like, so that none would notice at once—and when they did notice, they would be used to it, like. There’s many a true heart up there that should be burning hot and bright, but because of the darkness and decay, it is dim and hardly gives a light at all. Us blind weavers may not be able to see with our eyes, but we know how dark the tapestry we’re weaving has become. A whole island . . . fallen asleep . . . not knowin’ it’s bein’ sucked into the mire. The world has always carried sickness inside of it, but it is falling into a swoon . . .”

Freya removed the stick from her mouth. “You really think that we can do this—whatever needs to be done?”

“You’re the right thread—the right length and the right luster— and you’re in the right place. It remains to be proved whether you are strong enough to hold yet. Just remember that inside you bear the strength of hundreds of thousands of your sisters before you. It will guide you, but you must listen to it, and nothing else.”

She left Freya, and the girl remained, staring into the darkness. After a while she sat down and wrapped her arms around her knees and didn’t rise again until she heard the voices of the men behind her.

4

They set out from the weaver women’s camp feeling more rested than at any time since leaving Niðergeard. They had been given some short strips of dried meat that were as tough as leather but also rather flavorful.

The travelers left the dry island by the same beach that they had arrived. The ground from there onwards continued sloping downwards and they found it getting damper. Then they started coming across large puddles—still, black pools of water. Swiðgar cautioned them to watch their step as there was no telling how deep these pools might be; the surfaces they could see could be just thin films of water on rock, or they could be the skin of a fathomless sinkhole, the currents of which could take them away faster than it was possible to fight.

Even stepping very near the edges of the puddles was a risk, Swiðgar said, as a rocky bank could crumble away. For this reason the travelers spread out and tied the rope to their belts to connect themselves to each other for safety. Swiðgar took the first position with Ecgbryt following directly behind him. Freya and Daniel were led along an unpredictable and erratic path. As the puddles grew wider, more frequent and irregularly shaped, they found themselves at a dead end and were forced to turn back and find a different path.

The air was growing colder, chilled by the dampness that Freya now associated with darkness so deep that it felt massive. Because of the meandering path they were forced to take, their journey over the lake bed plain, although tedious and uneventful, was far from boring. They found the tension and uncertainty exhausting. They took more breaks than they felt were probably necessary. Daniel and Freya would fall to the ground, their heads nearly spinning from all the turns and U-turns they had to make out of dead ends and cul-de-sacs.

In the light of their lamps, they saw a structure ahead of them and they made their way to it. It was another pier, a longer and bigger one, but just as dry and ruined as the last. They scaled the bank and found that the pier was an extension of a large ramp that went steeply upwards. They had no choice but to go up.

They walked many hours and took many breaks, never knowing how high this underground mountain—which is what they came to think of it as—rose ahead of them. The last time Freya could remember climbing so high was while hiking in the Lake District. But climbing so high and still being underground was a very different sensation. She was glad that she couldn’t see how far up they were. It felt as if they were leaving the Wild Caves far behind—which she was glad of—but how much farther did they have to climb?

There was an indefinable change in the air, and the noise that their footsteps made allowed them to sense a narrowing of the walls around them. The ground became steeper and then curled around them, shunting them to the left, creating a wall to their right.

Cresting the mound of scree, they found themselves on a rock shelf that ran to their left, and no option but to follow it. They moved cautiously, each of them inwardly terrified that the ground would give way beneath them. But to their relief it broadened and continued on.

Then they discovered the carvings.

All of a sudden the wall was covered with them. Most of them looked like writing, but with odd letters that were made of straight lines only, no curves. Some of them were long horizontal lines with perpendicular and slanting lines stemming from and intersecting the baseline. Daniel ran his hands along them; they were set very deeply into the rock. Sometimes there was just a single running line a couple of inches high and a foot long, scrawled here and there like graffiti. At other points, there were large blocks of tightly packed letters with no spaces, several feet in length and height, well blocked out and bordered.

One set of carvings quite startled Daniel. He had to stop and pull back his torch to see the full extent of them. Lines of words snaked through each other like ribbons, randomly twisting and splitting and converging. Caught in the middle of this was a man with a bearded face, kneeling, with his arms raised, the words twisting around him and his limbs. His face, almost cartoon-like in its simplicity, nonetheless wore the look of someone in deep anxiety.

The others, seeing Daniel had stopped, returned to stand beside him. They spent a few silent moments contemplating the picture.

Freya shuddered.

“Swiðgar,” Ecgbryt said in a low voice, “you are more familiar with the old script than I. Can you read it?”

“Hmm, not easily,” Swiðgar answered. “I wish Ceolferþ were here; he was more the scholar than I. The letters I know, but not their arrangement. It is not our tongue.” He stepped forward and reached a hand out to some crudely etched words only a sentence long.

“Apart from these,” he said, “which forbid the passing of any person. It is a curse, written backwards. Perhaps all these words are written backwards,” he said, casting his eyes across the wall.

Daniel felt a chill ripple across his shoulders. The words and banks of letters were no longer an interesting puzzle but a wall of angry and oppressive words, aware of them, warning them away, cursing them.

“I fear no curse from man or devil,” declared Swiðgar. “My heart has been sealed against both by one stronger than any enchanted.”

A short distance farther, they came across a cave mouth—an archway in the rock. It was obviously man-made and bordered with row upon row of angry-looking writing that none of them even wanted to read. There were columns or standing stones that had been placed in front of the tunnel entrance like two rows of guards, three on each side, each stone covered top to bottom in angry-looking letters.

Thankfully the writing did not continue inside the tunnel—the walls were unmarked in any way. As the travelers stood, wondering what might be in that tunnel and where it led, they heard a slow, rhythmic scraping sound start up that grated on their spines. They stood silently, listening to it and holding their lanterns up in front of them. After a minute it stopped, and with deep breaths they entered the tunnel. Its walls were not rounded but octagonal; whoever had constructed the passage must have been meticulous in its carving, for though it twisted and turned maddeningly, the walls and diagonals kept their shape, never moving farther away or closer together.

The meandering passage bends became corners, then hairpins, tightly packed together, turning first this way and then that, and then the other. The travelers picked their way along and were starting to feel quite dizzy and disoriented, with all the zigzagging— right and then right again, full left, right, left, right, right, left—when suddenly the floor fell from underneath them.