Tundra

‘Where am I?’

‘A strange question for a god. You are at the heart of the world.’

‘What? Who are you? Get off me.’

‘But my lord Hassis–’

‘Hassis?’ Eiron flailed, turning on his side on the beach. All around him were rocks– he seemed to be lying in some kind of cavern, with stalactites and arching beams of bedrock. He pushed himself to his feet. The air was cold and clammy instead of merely damp, and he felt hard, loose stones where the springy forest floor had been. A transparent, slightly filmy ceiling stretched overhead, obscured in part by the tendrils of smoke, or whatever it was, that coiled upwards like tiny dragons, appearing in the absence of any breeze or convection currents to stir of their own free will. The only sound was of the tide lapping at what seemed to be a beach of stones, like the ones he stood on. The water splashed and sucked in a steady, grey rhythm, gently toying with the smaller pebbles as a cat might play with a mouse, uncertain whether or not it wanted to drag them back into its blackened maw. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘You are Hassis, my god,’ Aais explained, bemused. How could the weaver of fates not remember? ‘You saved me in the ocean.’

‘Ah. I did, at that,’ Eiron realised, rubbing his head. It was sorer than he recalled it being. So was his back and… he stared down at the gash in his side. ‘Count yourself lucky,’ he said. ‘You’re the only person I’ve ever saved, and I only did that because I thought it’d bring me luck. Which it didn’t,’ he added with an edge of bitterness, feeling his fingers come away from his ribs hot and wet.

‘You’re not Hassis?’ Aais asked, faltering slightly.

The Seafarer drew himself up to his full height, puffing out his chest as much as pain would allow, and secretly wondering how much of his strength he would be able to salvage for his escape. ‘I am Eiron,’ he announced, ‘a Prince of the Seafarers. Not even that, now. Where are we, anyway? The last thing I remember, I was fighting someone.’

Aais shook his finned face so that droplets of loose water shivered into the air. ‘Your guess is as good as mine, dry-lander. We are underground, and we are at a confluence of rivers, but I don’t know how you would describe where we are. The dry lands are a mystery to me.’

‘Then why are you here?’

‘When my god brought me up onto the dry land,’ said Aais, with a tone of awe, ‘I thought it must be a sign that I was supposed to be here.’ However, he finished sounding confused, even lost.

‘I see,’ Eiron said simply. ‘For that, I can only apologise. Once again, following me has led someone astray…’

‘I don’t know that that’s true yet. Even if you’re not Hassis, your presence here is an omen from him. Your tattoos tell me that.’ Aais nodded knowingly at the kraken miniatures that coiled up the Seafarer’s arms, and across his broad chest and back.

‘I doubt that,’ Eiron grumbled.

Aais shook his head again. They both stood on the stony shore, amongst the vapours that clouded the air between them, so that the fish man spoke through a heavy mist, appearing veiled. ‘My people say that you never see the currents that move you. In your case, it is Hassis making those currents. You don’t know how you got here.’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘Then tell me,’ he suggested, not daring to command. ‘Maybe Hassis wanted me to hear it from you.’

Eiron sat himself back down on the rocks, holding his aching side. ‘Very well,’ he agreed, perceiving little choice. ‘I was once a Prince of the Seafarers. My father died when I was young, cut down by an arrow on a raid against the Sons of the Storm. When he died, my uncle, Furon, stepped into his place as regent. To his credit, he didn’t try to have me killed, but I knew he wanted me gone, and I didn’t want to stay, so as soon as I could hold an axe I took to raiding.’

Aais cocked his head, fins quivering. ‘Why?’

‘You wouldn’t understand. I don’t know how it works in fish country, but when you’re leading a raid at the head of your own longboat, you’re the master of your own world. You don’t answer to anyone.’

‘That does not appeal to me at all,’ exclaimed Aais with surprise, ‘but, continue.’

Eiron suppressed a glare, turning it onto the hard stones instead of his saviour. ‘Why not?’ he asked begrudgingly, failing to see what was so objectionable.

‘I swim in a school,’ Aais explained. ‘I have my family and friends around me, and my elders beneath me.’ He gestured around the cavern with his webbed hands, sweeping his arms towards the beckoning bay that seemed to harbour a fathomless well. ‘Being up here, without them is difficult.’

‘My condolences,’ Eiron said, hastily, before recounting the rest of his tale. ‘Anyway, there was a raid, and a blizzard came up out of nowhere, and my band got separated from one another, and in the storm I couldn’t tell who I was fighting, and someone came up behind me, and they died.’

Aais was incredulous, his lamp-lit eyes round as bubbles. ‘You killed one of your own?’

‘They died,’ Eiron corrected him. ‘How was I to know? Anyway, when I went home, Furon told me I’d forfeited my position, and I had to serve his son now, so I took my inheritance and left.’

‘Your inheritance?’

‘Gold, mostly,’ Eiron muttered. ‘My father’s axe, and some of the nicer weapons. No more than what I was owed. It’s probably still up there somewhere.’ He nodded skyward, where he presumed his homeland to be. ‘Anyway, the druids told me that I could be restored to my previous position if I killed some enemy of theirs, but that didn’t work either, and my crew were all killed, and now I’m here.’

‘Druids?’

‘Yes, that’s right, they don’t come into the water, do they? Druids are a bit like wizards. I’m not sure I understand the distinction myself. It doesn’t matter, anyway. There’s no miracle to my story, no lesson from your god for you. It’s just the story of how I made bad decisions and people around me died because of them.’

‘Look in the pool.’ Aais’ eyes were glazed. This time, it was an instruction.

Eiron obeyed without thinking. ‘I can’t see anything,’ he objected.

‘Down there, in the dark.’

He squinted harder, and drew back in revulsion. ‘What is that thing?’

‘That,’ said Aais, with pride, relishing the captivity of the other’s attention, ‘is an elder. It’s a small one, of course. The really old ones wouldn’t fit in a space this size.’

Eiron was critical. The bottom of the pool, as far as he could see, was glimmering faintly in a myriad of yellows, like the iris of an eye. The well in the centre, that depthless plunge, might have been a pupil. Although it seemed unimaginable, it was not impossible. ‘Is it looking at me?’

‘I don’t know,’ Aais replied, with an air of mystery. ‘It’s not my place to say what elders look at. If it is, consider it an honour. I pulled you out of that pool, Eiron, but do you know how you got there?’

‘Honestly, no.’

‘Elders are so large that they distort the tides around them. The really big ones, the grand millennials that spawned at the dawn of time, they can change the tides so much that even the moon notices and moves in new patterns along with them.’ Aais reached up for the sky, where the moon might have been, if it was night. Eiron paid him no attention.

‘I don’t want it looking at me.’

‘You can’t hide from it. If it wanted to hurt you, it would have crushed you already. The tides that brought you here, Eiron, were of this elder’s devising. You would not have ended up in this cavern with me were it not for this elder distorting the flow of the water. You never see the currents that move you, but they move you nonetheless, just as they moved me the day that you saved me.’ He paused, and then, in the presence of his leviathan god, found the courage to say what he had wanted to say all along. ‘You and I met for a reason.’