The Storyteller and Other Tales Read online

  The Storyteller

  and Other Tales

  by

  K. V. Johansen

  Sybertooth Inc.

  Sackville, New Brunswick

  Copyright © K.V. Johansen 2008

  Cover art copyright © Sybertooth 2008 / Cover by Artemisia

  All rights reserved. No reproduction, copying, distribution, or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical reviews and articles. This work is entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is coincidental or fictionalized.

  A great deal of work - sometimes years of work - goes into creating literature. There are also many hours of labour spent in editing, proofreading, typesetting, and publishing each book. If you have purchased this e-book through a retailer, thank you. Your payment helps to support the creation and publication of the literary works you enjoy. If you have downloaded a pirated copy of this book, take into consideration that you are not only breaking the law, but you are exploiting the hard work of others in order to get something for nothing. Please respect those who bring you the books you enjoy, either by buying legitimate copies, or by borrowing books for free from your public library.

  First published 2008 in paperback by:

  Sybertooth Inc.

  59 Salem St.

  Sackville, New Brunswick

  E4L 4J6

  Canada

  www.sybertooth.ca

  This electronic edition published 2016 by Sybertooth. Inc.

  ISBN: 978-1-927592-13-7 (e-book)

  for the C.O.T.Þ.O.,

  which heard these stories first.

  Other books by K.V. Johansen

  Fiction

  Blackdog

  The Leopard: Marakand Volume One

  The Lady: Marakand Volume Two

  Gods of Nabban

  The Serpent Bride: Stories From Medieval Danish Ballads

  Teen and Children’s Fiction

  Nightwalker: The Warlocks of Talverdin I

  Treason in Eswy: The Warlocks of Talverdin II

  Warden of Greyrock: The Warlocks of Talverdin III

  The Shadow Road: The Warlocks of Talverdin IV

  Torrie and the Dragon

  Torrie and the Pirate-Queen

  Torrie and the Firebird

  Torrie and the Snake-Prince

  Torrie and the Dragonslayers

  The Cassandra Virus

  The Drone War

  The Black Box

  Picture Books

  Pippin Takes a Bath

  Pippin and the Bones

  Pippin and Pudding

  Non-fiction

  Quests and Kingdoms:

  A Grown-Up’s Guide to Children’s Fantasy Literature

  Beyond Window-Dressing?

  Canadian Children’s Fantasy at the Millennium

  Foreword

  The stories included in this collection were written over a number of years, and take place in a variety of settings. The first two are secondary-world fantasies. “The Storyteller” is the most recently-written of the works included here, and sets the stage for the novel Blackdog and its sequels, a foretale, if you will. I have always been most interested in writing about people on the edges: the edges of their world, of their society, of humanity. Moth and Mikki, the heroes of “The Storyteller”, are two of my favourite characters. The epic fantasy Blackdog, in which Moth appears, was written well before this short story, though the short story made it into print first. Blackdog, published by Pyr in 2011, is set a couple of centuries after the events of “The Storyteller”.

  “He-Redeems”, a different world again, is set in a bronze-age civilisation somewhat modelled on that of ancient Mesopotamia. It spun off from a much longer work, the hero of which is mentioned only in passing, but whose existence precipitates the events of this story.

  “The Inexorable Tide” is a tale of Arthur, rooted more in the “historical” tradition of Geoffrey of Monmouth than in the romance cycle of Chrétien de Troyes and Malory, though the pagan Ladies make it very much an Arthur in the modern fantasy tradition as well. The story’s most immediate literary influences, however, are Mary Stewart and Rosemary Sutcliff. “The Inexorable Tide” was first published in Descant 122, vol. 34, no. 3, fall 2003.

  “Anno Domini Nine Hundred and Ninety-One” was inspired by the Old English poem on Maldon, a battle fought by English levies against Norse raiders in 991. The Norse landed on an island, and rather than holding the narrow tidal causeway against them, the local lord, with great regard for the heroic ethos but little tactical sense, gave up this advantage, allowing the Vikings ashore. “AD CMXCI” (then titled “On Þissum Geare”) was performed at the Hamilton Public Library by the poet John Ferns and myself in 1994; this is its first appearance in print. The translations from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Old English Maldon (interlaced with the text in italics) are my own. Tolkien wrote a play on the aftermath of the battle, “The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son”; I found my imagination inspired by the thought of the common men involved, who, though they had their own reasons for fighting, perished for their lord’s pride.

  And finally, a word about pronunciation. The names in “Anno Domini” are Old English; the culture and some of the names in “The Storyteller” are influenced by early mediaeval Scandinavia and Old Norse; Nimiane, the name if not my conception of the character, is from the French Romance tradition of Arthur but has passed into Modern French and English. Some of the trickier words to the Modern English eye should be read more or less as follows, unless you are a student of medieval languages, in which case feel free to read them as you please! Nimiane > Nim-ee-ayn; Ulfleif > Ulf-lay-eef; Ragnvor > Rahg-n-vor; Hravnmod > Hrav-n-mode; Hrafnsfjall > Hrav-ns-fyall; Pante > Pan-ta; ealdorman > ale-dor-man; Beorhthelm > Bay-orht-helm; Byrhtnoth > Beert-noth; Cerdic > Kair-dich; Cynric > Kin-rich; Aethelred > Eh-thel-red; thegn > thane; geare > ye-ar-ah.

  The Storyteller

  The storyteller and her giant of a man came to the great wooden hall at Ulvsness when the last red light had faded from the roofs. She didn’t look to be a skald, butterfly bright to show how lords had rewarded her: no gold at wrist and throat, no scrap of eastern silk. Her undyed tunic was overlarge and rolled up at the sleeves, her dark trousers patched at the knees. Even her long braid was the colour of bleached autumn grass. She was a drab moth of a woman, and, standing in the porch where guests would leave their weapons, that was the name she gave the doorwarden.

  “Moth. A storyteller, from far away.”

  Young Ulfleif reached the porch in time to hear this, and stopped dead in her headlong rush. Something about the stranger prickled her spine. Maybe it was that she had a look of the last queen, the grandmother Ulf barely remembered, who had either defied fate or served some grim foreknowledge to name her Ulfleif, wolf’s heir.

  Ulfleif was late coming to the hall because she had taken her lyre up to the peak of the Mertynsbeorg to spend an afternoon with the god who had watched the lands about long before the first king, Ulfleif’s ancestor, came with his dragon-prowed ships out of the drowned west. The god Mertyn had been in a fey mood, telling Ulfleif, not for the first time that summer, that there were hidden powers come into the land, creeping dangers beyond Mertyn’s strength to clearly see or oppose, and that Ulfleif should warn the queen, who never bothered to climb the god’s crag. Ragnvor the queen would only laugh at her and tell her that since the death of their uncle, who had been their fa
ther’s Sword and then Ragnvor’s, Ulfleif could not afford to be a little girl, fretting over what-may-bes.

  Ulfleif had gotten Mertyn telling tales of the days before the coming of Hravnmod the Wise, stories of demons and gods and the little first folk who still lived on the high fells. They both forgot the warnings, or pretended they had, trying to shape one of the tales into a new song. Why not? Neither of them had the power to escape whatever doom stalked Ulvsness, or the fates that bound them to it. The gods of the high places were born of the land, and watched over it, but they could not direct the affairs of their folk. When the folk chose to ignore them, there was little they could do. Ulfleif, who would have been a skald, was doomed by birth to carry an ill-omened sword, and probably to die in battle, as nearly every man and woman cursed with that sword had.

  It made a good story, but she would rather have been the skald chanting it.

  Ulf dodged past the strangers, but had to stop to hitch at Kepra as the sword, still too large for her, snagged on the doorpost. She was skilled, for her age, with any other blade, but Kepra thwarted her even in little things. And in her haste she’d gone and left her lyre on the Mertynsbeorg for the dew to warp. The doorwarden sniggered. Ulfleif glanced up, into the storyteller’s sea-grey eyes, and froze. Not a mere chance resemblance in the bones; it was like staring into her sister’s silver mirror. Her own eyes, her grandmother’s — some bastard kin come home?

  The storyteller had to see it too. “Who are you?” she demanded, as though she had every right to make demands of a princess in her sister’s hall. The woman’s gaze slid to Kepra’s garnet-studded hilt. Her man touched her shoulder, reminder of courtesies a storyteller ought to know. She bowed then.

  “I’m called Moth. This is Mikki.”

  “Ulfleif Reginsdaughter,” Ulf said, wondering, Moth who? Mikki of where? She eyed Mikki, whose head brushed the lintel of the door. He was an evident foreigner, with his moon-pale skin and eyes black as sea-coal, though his unkempt hair and beard were barley-gold. Ulfleif had taken him for the storyteller’s servant, even a bondman, barefoot and dressed in nothing but an unbelted tunic. That hand on the shoulder was not a servant’s gesture, though, and it was Moth, not Mikki, who carried the one bundle.

  A sword? Wrapped in dark cloth and tucked under her arm, but it had the length. How had the doorwarden missed it? Moth gave her the merest shake of the head and a wry smile that was hardly there, and Ulfleif swallowed her protest unspoken.

  “Ulfleif, the Queen’s Sword,” the hallmaster corrected, coming to greet the strangers as Ulfleif edged away.

  “Ah,” the storyteller said, and, as if it answered much, “The Queen’s Sword. With the sword of the Queen’s Sword.”

  Ulfleif fled, though there was no hint of mockery in Moth’s voice. To be the King’s or the Queen’s Sword, the elder sibling’s champion, was the second child’s doom in their family, tradition that had come over the sea with Hravnmod the Wise. It was hardly her fault she came to it so young, a girl not yet a woman, but they all made a joke of her — when they did not whisper she was fated, by her very name, for treachery.

  “Your knees are torn,” Ragnvor reproved Ulfleif when she reached the dais. “Were you up to see Mertyn again? You shouldn’t pester the god like that.”

  “Climbing,” said Ulfleif. “Builds muscle.”

  Ragnvor nodded, barely listening, and turned her attention back to her wizard, handsome, charming, red-haired Yorthas — who, some muttered, had his mind set on being more than wizard to the queen. Yorthas gave Ulfleif a sympathetic wink.

  “A storyteller’s come,” Ulfleif offered. Ragnvor nodded again. Ulfleif sighed. Yorthas was in the low-backed chair that should be hers by the queen’s high seat. Rather than squeezing onto a lower bench or drawing attention to herself by sending someone for a stool, Ulfleif took bread and a wooden platter of pork and kale from the table, and leaned against the wall behind her sister’s seat. The place of the Queen’s Sword was watching. She would watch, since it seemed doorwarden, hallmaster, and even the warriors who were the queen’s hearthswords were failing to do so. Ulfleif watched as the hallmaster showed Moth and her man to a seat on the bench along the wall. The fire flared between them, but she saw Moth watching her in turn. She knew the woman, deep in the heart, in that place where she had to bury all the songs, but that did not mean she was going to completely ignore the fact a stranger had brought a sword into the hall.

  “Oh, sit down,” Ragnvor said, noticing Ulfleif’s stance. “I don’t expect you to save me from enemies today, little sister.” Ragnvor’s own sword leaned on the arm of her chair, and if any enemies stormed the hall it would be Ragnvor defending Ulfleif, while the Queen’s Sword tripped over Kepra and dropped it on her toe.

  Ulfleif shrugged and stayed where she was. Ragnvor laughed and settled back to her meal, sharing her drinking-horn with Yorthas.

  The storyteller watched the high table across the flames and Ulfleif frowned at the red glow reflected in her eyes. Her man’s flashed green. Ulfleif rubbed her own. Salt driftwood in the fire. Green and blue danced on the edges of the flames.

  While her sister’s gleeman sang old songs indifferent well in a cracked voice, never varying from his last rendering, likely not from the one forty years before, Ulfleif amused herself guessing what sort of tales the storyteller brought. Peasant tales, if her clothes were any guide. Cunning shepherds and earthy demons? Her accent was careful and somewhat strange to the ear, but more suited to a lady than a labourer. New romances from the south, full of over-mannered maidens and anguished lovers? She rather thought not. Moth was Northron, even if her tongue would not let Ulfleif name the exact bay or high dale. Old familiar tales of the north with the flavour of some other king’s folk, she decided, and prepared to enjoy herself.

  When the trestle tables were cleared away and the servants circled with brimming jugs, the hallmaster brought the storyteller forward and gave her name to the queen.

  Moth didn’t stand formally before the hall, before the queen. She sat herself uninvited on the edge of the long central hearth, that distrusted bundle by her foot. People whispered, even laughed. Peasant manners. But as she spoke — it might have been for the queen alone, or for Ulfleif — her voice reeled all the folk of the hall in to her. The gleeman, skilled in that at least, threw out careful notes from his harp to fall among Moth’s words, bright as silver, dark as midnight forest.

  But Ulfleif could have chanted the words herself. The merest babe in the hall could.

  Long ago, in the days of the first kings in the north, there were seven devils escaped from the cold hells, where the Old Great Gods had sealed them after the great war in the heavens.

  And in the days of the first kings in the north, there were seven wizards. These wizards were wise, and powerful. They knew the runes and the secret names, and the patterns of the living world and of the dead. But the seven wizards desired to know yet more, and see yet more, and to live forever like the gods of the high places and the goddesses of the waters and the demons of the forest and the stone and the sand and the grass.

  Now the devils, having no place, had no bodies, but were like smoke or like a flame, and not of the earth at all. Some folk even call them kin to the Old Great Gods, though this is heresy —

  “Of course,” said the storyteller, though which statement her voice mocked, Ulfleif could not decide.

  And these seven devils who had escaped the cold hells hungered to be of the stuff of the world, as the gods and the goddesses and the demons of the earth may be at will, and as men and women are whether they will or no. But they did not desire loving worship and the friendship of living men and women, as do the gods of the high places and the goddesses of the waters. They did not watch and judge and cherish the souls of human-folk after death, as the Old Great Gods are said to do —

  Was she some philosophical heretic of the far e
ast, to add ‘are said to’?

  — in the land beyond the stars. The devils craved dominion as the desert craves water, and they knew neither love nor justice nor mercy. They made a bargain with the seven wizards, that they would join their souls to the wizards’ souls, and share the wizards’ bodies, sharing knowledge, and unending life, and power.

  But —

  “So the story goes,” Moth added.

  — the devils deceived the wizards, and betrayed them. The devils took the souls of the wizards into their own, and become one with them, and devoured them. They walked as wizards among the wizards, and destroyed those who would not obey, or who counselled against their counsel. They desired the homage of kings and the enslavement of the folk, and they were never sated, as the desert is never sated with rain. They would have ruled the earth and the folk of the earth and its gods and its goddesses; they would have devoured the spirit of the living earth and turned the strength of the earth against the Great Gods in their heaven.

  So the kings of the north and the tribes of the grass and those wizards whom the devils had not yet slain pretended submission, and plotted in secret, and they rose up against the tyranny of the devils and overthrew them. But the devils were devils, even in human bodies, and not easily slain. Only with the help of the Old Great Gods were they bound, one by one, and imprisoned — in stone, in water, in earth, in the heart of a flame, in the youngest of rivers, in the oldest of trees, in the breath of a burning mountain, as all the stories say. And they were guarded by demons, and goddesses, and gods. And the Old Great Gods withdrew from the world again, to await the souls of human-folk in the heavens beyond the stars.

  That preamble should have taken them into one of the many stories of the war of the seven devils, which everyone knew. But the storyteller pulled them into another tale, not one of the usual cycle, weaving new words into the old pattern. Ulfleif, on the first name, shook her head, not wanting to hear again of her namesake’s shame and treachery, and warning against telling it here, under this roof where Hravnmod King died betrayed. Moth saw the warning, Ulfleif knew she did, but she went on speaking. Mikki, though, rose and disappeared into the darkness of the porch.