“In doing so, they lost the ability to understand it. They could no longer merge themselves thoughtlessly like the animals. And this cut them off from a great joy. They felt as if their lives were dull and meaningless. A few people tried to tear down the wall, but they were no longer able to endure such reality. Did you ever hear of the Valley of Lunatics?”
Jack pushed himself away from the rowan tree. Without quite realizing how he’d got there, he had found himself leaning against it in a quiet daze.
“Come on, get moving,” cried the Bard. “Things are worse than I thought.” He pulled Jack into the meadow and whirled him around. “Jump! Run! Do handstands!” he ordered. And so Jack danced and cavorted around the meadow, feeling silly and exhilarated at the same time. His mind seemed to clear. The heavy air of the valley freshened. Finally, he threw himself to the grass, laughing and panting.
“That’s more like it,” said the Bard with his hands on his bony hips.
“Where’s this Valley of Lunatics?” Jack asked.
“In Ireland.” The Bard lowered himself carefully to the grass. The boy could almost hear his bones creak.
“That’s on the other side of the world,” said Jack.
“Not really. You could reach it in a few weeks.”
“Father says the Irish walk upside down and have eyes in their feet,” said Jack.
“Your father—don’t get me distracted, lad. The monks told him that as a joke. Half of
“Is that why you had me do handstands?” said Jack.
“Exactly. It puts you back in your body, keeps you from being overwhelmed. But my friend liked the feeling of power.” The Bard sighed and fell silent for several minutes. Jack found himself growing drowsy again.
“Move around if you have to,” said the Bard. So Jack did a few somersaults and finished up by walking on his hands, as he’d seen a jester do at a village fair.
“You see, whatever power a bard has,” the old man continued, “comes from the life force: his music, his ability to hold an audience, his skill in calling up storms.”
Jack straightened up. That last one sounded interesting.
“It takes years to control it, and my friend didn’t want to wait. He refused to stop while it was still safe. At first he was successful. He could cause a fire to hang in midair or birds to fly upside down. But one day—while he was trying to make a forest pull up its roots and walk—something went
I could actually hear it. He fell over. A second later he sprang up and his body shook as though a giant dog had him in its jaws. Then he gave a mighty howl and ran off as fast as he could go.”
Jack was horrified. The Bard had said
A mist had blown up from the sea, and the air was beginning to chill. The bees had left their feeding. Each moment there were fewer of them as they sped off to their warm hives.
“I could hear them cackling before I could see them,” said the Bard. “It was a terrible sound, so like laughter and yet so completely joyless. All the failed bards in Ireland had found their way to this one place where the life force was stronger than anywhere else. And there they stayed. I saw my friend, but he was nothing like the man I’d known. His eyes and hair were wild. He was in the grip of a power far beyond him, and I, poor apprentice that I was, had no way to free him.”
The old man climbed to his feet and held out his hand. “Let us not dwell on the unhappy past. I may have done you harm, but I’m no longer a raw apprentice. I can help you. And perhaps it was all for the best. Dangers sweep upon us. Storm clouds are gathering. Swords are being forged….” Muttering to himself, the Bard made his way up the path.
Jack followed him. He felt somewhat dazed. The sleepiness that had come upon him earlier was creeping back, but the farther they got from the little valley, the better he felt. And by the time they reached the Roman house on its windswept cliff, he was fine.
Chapter Five
HROTHGAR’S GOLDEN HALL
Moons waxed and waned over the little village. The apples on Father’s trees turned golden. Grain bent in waves before the west wind, and presently, harvest time arrived. Sheep were shorn, honey was taken from the hives, pigs were slaughtered in preparation for winter. Jack stayed in the Roman house. He couldn’t hear the killing of the pigs, but he could feel it. The air trembled with their deaths.
All the while he practiced magic with the Bard. He learned to call up mist, make apples drop from a high branch, and call birds down from the sky. It was small stuff, but it delighted him.
Then it was winter. Snow settled over the high hills. The sea turned dark and the sun fled. Jack stayed indoors and memorized poems. The Bard had made him a small harp, but the cold was so intense, Jack’s fingers were clumsy on the strings. The old man decided it was time to teach the making of fires. “Concentrate on heat,” he said, sitting across from a jumble of sticks and straw.
“I’m freezing,” said Jack. The Bard had put out the fire at dawn, and the air was so cold, it was frightening. Ice rimed the paintings on the walls.
“It’s only freezing if you think it is,” the Bard said.
“Anger belongs to death,” said the Bard. “It turns on you when you least expect it.”
Jack, with an inward sigh, thought about the hot sun pouring down last summer. Rain fell on the earth and flowed out of hillsides months later. Surely light remained trapped as well. He searched for it, going deep into the soil, beyond the nests of mice and voles, beyond even the gnarled roots of the forest, until he came to rock. And beyond the rock he found heat. He saw a faint glow in his mind and drew it forth. He called to it, mentally held out his hands to it.
Jack felt sick. Magic sometimes did that to him. The power roiled in the pit of his stomach, and he thought he was going to throw up. He opened his eyes to see a thread of smoke curling up from the straw.
“Don’t give up now,” said the Bard. “Keep calling it.
.” But the nausea won out. Jack stumbled to the door, and when he returned, the spark had died.
“Don’t worry,” the Bard said cheerfully. “What’s done once can be done again. We have all day.”
thought Jack. But he found he was sleepy after all. It would feel so nice to give himself up to the sensation. He could almost see the frost giants calling to him. Lie down, boy,they said. It’s a fine old bed, ice is. Nothing like snow for a cover either.
He felt himself being shaken. “I said, walk around!” the Bard shouted. “You’ve got to recognize the danger.” He forced the boy to put first one foot, then the other before him. Jack almost fell over before he got the hang of walking again.
“Life and death are in constant battle,” said the Bard. “In winter death is strongest. The frost giants lie in wait for the careless. When you work magic in winter, you have to be especially careful.”
“Y-Y-You d-don’t stare out o-over the sea any-ah-anymore,” stammered Jack, his teeth chattering. “A-Aren’t you w-worried about Q-Queen Frith?”
“Very observant of you.” The Bard briskly marched Jack up and down the house. “I’m not worried because the servants of Queen Frith can’t travel now. No Northman would take his beloved boat out in winter. And those ox-brained oafs do love their boats. They sing to them and buy them jewels as though they were women. When a chieftain dies, he is sent out with all his worldly goods in a blazing ship. He even has a slave woman to wait on him.”
“A woman?” Jack gasped. “Is she—? Do they—?”
“Do they kill her? Yes. An old hag called the Angel of Death strangles her. Then she is laid next to her lord and they are both burned.”
Jack shivered again, this time not entirely from cold. The more he heard about these Northmen, the worse they sounded.
“Try the fire-making again,” said the Bard. “I’ll watch to make sure you don’t go too far.”
Jack’s second attempt went more smoothly, and the third, fourth, and fifth almost succeeded. Finally, on the sixth try, hours later, he got the plume of smoke to burst into flame.
“I did it!” he cried. He danced around the room, feelings of cold and defeat gone. “I’m a bard! I’m a wonder! I’m the cleverest boy in the world!” The heat was pouring out of the earth now. The rime on the walls melted. The frozen thatch softened and dripped. It began to smolder.
“Begone!”
The room suddenly darkened and the air filled with ashes and smoke. Jack stopped and stared.
In the dim light of the doorway the Bard stood with folded arms. “I’ve told you before. Know when to quit.”
Jack felt as though he’d been struck. “How dare you put out my fire!” he screamed. “How dare you spoil my work!” Jack felt the power rise through his feet and heat his whole body. He was filled with a savage joy. He could do anything—
The Bard raised his staff. “Stop now,” he said quietly. “If I can repel a Nightmare from across the sea, you don’t want to know what I can do to a fledgling apprentice.”
The power vanished. Jack sank to the floor. He felt like he was alone on a dark sea with devouring waves all around. He was a mere insect crawling on a fragment of driftwood. How could he have imagined hurting the one person who had tried to help him? How could he have been so stupid? He began to cry.
“Oh, my, my, my,” said the Bard. “You really are a child. I’ve pushed you too hard.” He knelt down and put his hands on Jack’s head. Presently, the boy felt something drop over him like a soft blanket. It felt safe and warm. He wanted to wrap himself up and never come out.
“Listen, child,” came the old man’s soft voice. “You must respect the limits of your power. You can cause a great deal of harm if you don’t. I’ve cast a spell of protection over you. Let all wandering spirits see my mark and keep away.”
Jack heard no more words, though he did register the sound of the wind. It was like many voices calling to one another. And he heard the crackling of fire and felt its warmth—true warmth and not the false heat of anger.
On the long evenings Jack went back and forth to the heap of driftwood he had gathered during summer. It was then that the Bard told stories, and he wanted a cheerful fire in the background. “They are cruel tales,” he said. “They should be told in the light, with good friends and a merry heart.”
How you could tell a cruel tale with a merry heart was a mystery to Jack, but it wasn’t his place to argue. “If you were trained in Ireland, sir,” he dared to ask one night, “how did you meet up with… um… that northern king?”
“Ivar the Boneless?”
“Yes.” Jack hated to say the name. It sounded so horrible. It was like a long, green worm slithering through a swamp.
“I was young and foolish, like you,” said the Bard. “I had earned my harp from the College of Bards and had been awarded the Golden Mistletoe for outstanding spell-casting. Have I told you about that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I was ready for adventure, and thus it came to me, as adventure always does to the foolish. A northern warrior arrived at the college. He asked for a bard to accompany him to his lord’s castle. It sounded wonderful! Hrothgar was a mighty lord who lived in a golden hall. There was none like it in the world.
“It was as large as a hundred houses and filled with brave warriors and shield women. The fire pit alone could hold an entire oak tree. Hrothgar was generous as well. He gave gold rings to his followers and lavish feasts to all who sought shelter under his roof. But the one thing Hrothgar didn’t have was a first-rate bard. Have I told you I was awarded the Golden Mistletoe for outstanding spell-casting?”
“Yes, sir,” said Jack.
“So you see I was the natural choice for this honor. And the thought of traveling didn’t bother me. It’s what we bards do. I sailed to Hrothgar’s kingdom, and it was even better than described. His hall was like a great light in the midst of a wilderness.”
Jack listened breathlessly. The walls of the Roman house trembled in a winter storm, and the stones on the beach far below rattled like an army clashing its shields. No matter how carefully Jack stuffed heather and wool into crevices, the wind still found its way inside. The coals of the fire brightened and light danced on the walls.
But Hrothgar’s hall had allowed no winter. It was as sound as a nut and as warm and friendly as a summer afternoon. Its walls rang with laughter, even more so after the arrival of the Bard.
“I should have known,” mourned the Bard. “I should have
“Was he a
“Partly,” said the Bard. “His father was an ogre. Anyhow, monsters hate light,” said the Bard. “They cannot bear laughter, and the smell of feasting enrages them. Grendel waited until everyone was asleep. Then he crept into the hall and bit off the heads of ten warriors sleeping near the door. Don’t wince like that, Jack,” said the Bard. “When you retell this story, you’ll have to look confident.”
“I’m sorry,” said Jack.
“Grendel took home the bodies for dinner. I can tell you,
He was protected by a charm. The warriors slashed at him until their swords broke, but they couldn’t make a dent in his scaly hide.
“It went on for weeks,” said the Bard. “Whenever the monster got hungry, he dropped off at Hrothgar’s for a snack. No one asked for songs from me anymore. They were too depressed.”
Jack might have been mistaken, but it seemed the Bard felt insulted. “Weren’t you scared, sir?”
“Of course! But there’s no point giving in to fear. That’s like opening the door and saying, ‘Come right in, Master Grendel, sir. Wouldn’t you like to bite an arm or a leg off me?’ No! Death must be fought with life, and that means courage and that means joy. I can tell you, I was disgusted by the way Hrothgar and his crowd were handling their problem. They hid under the stairs like rabbits. Until Beowulf showed up.”