The Merman's Children Read online

  Poul Anderson

  The Merman’s Children

  1979

  Prologue

  THE coast of Dalmatia rises steeply. A bare league inland, Shibenik town stands high on a hill above the river Krka and sees mountain peaks in the east. Here the water forms a broad basin, which narrows as it moves on to the sea. Upstream, however, it tumbles in ringing cascades out of the lake which it and others have made.

  In the days when the Angevin Charles Robert became boy-king of Croats and Magyars, the land along those falls was mostly wildwood. Likewise it was around much of the lake, save where the Krka empties into this. There folk had long since cleared it and laid it under the plow. A little farther up the river, about where the Chikola flows into it, Skradin village clustered by the stronghold of its lord, the zhupan.

  Nevertheless, even within castle walls, the wilderness came a-haunting. Not only might one hear wolves howl by night and jackals bark by day, or have one’s fields raided by deer and wild boar, or glimpse the horned mightiness of elk and aurochs. Un-canny beings dwelt yonder-Leshy among the trees, a vodianoi in the deeps and lately, it was whispered, a vilja.

  Ivan Subitj, zhupan, paid scant heed to such talk among his serfs. He was a stark man, though just, near kin to the great Ban Pavle and thus aware of a larger world than theirs. Moreover, he had spent years outside, many of them in the wars that hardened and scarred him.

  Nor did his eldest son Mihajlo fear woodland bogies. Indeed, this youth had well-nigh forgotten whatever legends he heard early in life: for he had been educated at the abbey in Shibenik, had traveled to the bustling ports of Zadar and Split and once across the narrow sea to Italy. For his part, he wanted wealth and fame, escape from the changelessness wherein he had passed his cltild-hood. To that end, with Ivan’s help, he attached himself to the retinue of Pavle Subitj the kingmaker.

  Just the same, he remained fond of his home country and often visited Skradin. There they knew him as a merry soul, kindhearted if occasionally thoughtless, who brought with him color, song, and vivid stories from beyond their horizon. On a certain morn in a new summer, Mihajlo left the castle to go hunting. Half a dozen fellows accompanied him. Three were guards and body servants who had come along from Shibenik. Peace prevailed for the moment, both with the Venetians and among the powerful clans; and Ivan Subitj had beheaded the last bandit in these parts several years ago. Still, few men ventured far alone, and no women. The rest of those with Mihajlo as he rode forth were his younger brother Luka and two free peasants who would be guides and do the rough work. A pack of hounds trotted behind.

  The party made a brave sight. Mihajlo was clad in the latest Western fashion, green doublet and hose, saffron shirt, silk-lined cape, Cordovan half-boots and gauntlets, flat velvet cap on long brown curls, face clean-shaven. A hanger slapped at his waist whenever his horse grew frolicsome. He sat the beast as if they were one. His own attendants were hardly less gaudy; their spear-heads flashed aloft. Luka was in much the same knee-length coat, over tunic and cross-gaitered breeches, as the peasants; his garb was simply of better stuff, with finer embroidery along sleeves and hem, his brimless conical hat trimmed with sable while theirs had rabbit fur. He and they alike bore short, recurved bows, as well as knives of a size to cope with bear.

  Hoofs racketed in the street, thudded on paths beyond. Unlike Frankish lords, those who were Croatian generally respected their underlings; had Mihajlo ridden across the tender green of crop-lands, he would have answered to his father. Passing a meadow, he did frighten a few calves with a joyful blast on his horn, but rail fences kept them from bolting.

  Presently he was in the woods, on a game trail. This was mingled oak and beech forest, soaring boles, over-arching boughs, murmurous leaves, shadowy vaults and reaches where sunlight struck through in flecks and speckles, the hue of gold. Birdsong sounded remote and hushed against the quiet that brooded here. The air was warm, yet carried an edge, and full of odors that had naught to do with house or byre.

  The hounds caught a scent. Their clamor awoke. In the next hours the men took a stag, a wolf, a brace of badger; a wild sow eluded them, but they remained well content. Reaching the lake, they startled a flock of swans, let fly their arrows, brought down three. They thought they might return home.

  That happened which God allowed.

  Another stag trod onto the shore, a hundred yards from them.

  Late afternoon sunbeams washed aureate and blue-shadowed across him, for he was white, well-nigh the stature of an elk. Already his growing antlers made a tree athwart heaven.

  “By every saint!” shouted Mihajlo, and soared to his feet. A pair of shafts missed the deer, which waited until the men were in the saddle again. Thereafter he fled them. Yet he did not seek thick brush where horses could not follow. He stayed on the trails, ever glimmering in dimness. Vainly, the chase hallooed after. Back and forth he led his pursuers, up and down, round and about, while time waned. The mounts were blown, the dogs gasping, when at last he came back to the lake.

  Timber gloomed above its gleam. The sun had sunk and left only a smear of sulfur on western blue. Eastward was purple, swiftly darkening; a star trembled forth. Mist lay in streamers. Bats flitted on high. It was turning cold. Silence filled everything that was.

  Like a patch of fog, the crowned animal shivered and was gone.

  Mihajlo choked on an oath. Luka crossed himself over and over, as did the servants. Both peasants sprang from their stirrups, down onto their knees, whipped off their hats, and prayed aloud.

  “We have been lured,” mumbled Sisko, the senior of them.

  “By who and for what?”

  “Let us begone, in God’s name,” begged his friend Drazha.

  “No, hold.” Mihajlo rallied his courage. “Our steeds must rest.

  We could kill them if we push right on. You know that.”

  “Would you, you spend the night here?” stammered Luka.

  “An hour or two, till the moon rises and we can find our way,”

  Mihajlo said.

  An attendant of his stared across the quicksilver above the depths, at a ragged murk of foliage beyond, and protested, “Sir, this is no place for Christians. Old heathen things are abroad. That was no buck we hunted, it was the very wind, and now it has vanished to wherever the wind goes. Why?”

  “What, and you a city man?” Mihajlo gibed. “Our senses failed us, that’s all. Not surprising, weary as we are.” He peered through the dusk at their faces. “There is no place on earth which is not for Christians, if they have faith,” he said. “Come, let us call on our saints. How then can devils harm us?”

  Weakly heartened, they dismounted if they had not already done so, prayed together, unsaddled their beasts, began to rub these down with the cloths. More stars appeared in deepening twilight.

  Mihajlo’s laughter rattled through the stillness. “Do you see?

  We had no need of fear.”

  “No, never,” sang a girl’s voice. “Is it really you, my dearest?”

  He turned and beheld her. Though he and his companions had

  become blurs among shadows, she stood forth almost clearly, where she came out of the reeds onto land. Her nakedness and the unbound hair were that pale, her eyes that huge and bright. She neared him, arms held wide.

  “Jesus and Mary, save us,” moaned Drazha at his back. “It is the vilja.”

  “Mihajlo,” she cried low, “Mihajlo, forgive me, I am trying to remember, I truly am.”

  Somehow he stood his ground, there on the wet lakeside in the gloaming. “Who are you?” he uttered through the earthquake in his breast. “What do you want of me?”

  “The vilja,” Sisko quavered. “Demon, ghost. Pray it away, men, before it draw
s us down to its watery hell.”

  Mihajlo traced the Cross, stiffened his knees, confronted the

  being and commanded, “In the name of the Father, and of the

  Son, and of the Holy Spirit-“

  Before he could say, “-begone !” she was so close to him

  that he could make out the sweetly carven features. “Mihajlo,”

  she was pleading, “is that you? I’m sorry if I hurt you,

  Mihajlo—“

  “Nada!” he screamed.

  She stopped. “Was I Nada?” she asked him, with puzzlement

  upon her brow. After a while: “Yes, I think I was. And surely you were Mihajlo. . ..” She smiled. “Why, yes, you are. I brought you here to me, didn’t I, Mihajlo, darling?”

  He shrieked, whirled, and ran. His men fled likewise, every which way into the dark. That made the horses stampede. When the noise had died, Nada the vilja stood alone. More stars had awakened. The last sunset glow was gone, but the west was yet pale. These different lights sheened off the lake, which cast them onto her until she was a slender curve and ripple of white, a glistening of tears. “Mihajlo,” she said. “Please.”

  Then she forgot, laughed, and flitted into the forest.

  The hunters won home separately but safe. What Sisko and Drazha had to tell made people warier than ever of the wild-wood. Mihajlo related no more than he must. Others soon marked that he was no longer the glad youth he had been. Much time did he spend with the chaplain at the castle, and later with his confessor in Shibenik. Next year he entered a monastery. His father the zhupan was less than happy about that.

  Book One

  Kraken

  I

  THE bishop of Viborg got Magnus Gregersen for his new arch-deacon. This man was more learned than most, having studied in Paris, and he was upright and pious; but folk called him too strict, and said they liked no better to see him coming, with his long lean frame and his long sour face, than they liked to see any other black crow in their fields. The bishop felt one like that was needed, for laxity had set in during the years of strife that harried Denmark after King Valdemar the Victorious died.

  Riding along the eastern Jutish coast as episcopal provost, Magnus came to Als, not the island but a hamlet of the same name. It was poor and lonely, deep woods behind it and Kon-gerslev Marsh to the north. Only two roads served it, one on the strand and one twisting southwesterly toward Hadsund. Each Sep-tember and October its fishermen would join the hundreds that made catches in the Sound during the great herring run; otherwise their kind saw little of the outside world. They dragged their nets through the water and farmed their thin-soiled acres until time and toil broke them and they laid their bones to rest behind the small wooden church. Many old ways were still followed in steads like this. Magnus thought such doings pagan and bewailed to himself that there was no ready way to stop them.

  Thus a baffled zeal grew double strong in him when he heard certain rumors about Als. None there would own to knowledge of what might have been happening since that day fourteen years ago when Agnete carne back out of the sea. Magnus got the priest alone and sternly demanded the truth. Father Knud was a gentle man, born in one of those tiny houses, who had long turned a blind eye on what he thought were minor sins that gave his flock some cheer in their bleak lives. But he was aged now, and feeble, and Magnus soon wrung from him the full tale.

  The provost returned to Viborg with a holy flame in his gau.

  He went to the bishop and said: “My lord, in making my rounds

  through your diocese I found woefully many signs of the Devil’s

  work. But I had not looked to come upon himself~no, say rather

  a whole nest of his foulest, most dangerous fiends. Yet this I did

  in the strand-hamlet Als.” ,

  “What mean you?” asked the bishop sharply; for he also dreaded a return of the old witchy gods.

  “I mean that offshore is a town of merfolk!”

  The bishop eased. “How interesting,” he said. “I knew not that

  any were left in Danish waters. They are not devils, my good Magnus. They lack souls, yes, like other beasts. But they do not imperil salvation as might the dwellers in an elfhill. Indeed, they seldom have aught to do with the tribe of Adam.”

  “These are otherwise, my lord,” answered the archdeacon. “Listen to what I have learned. Two and twenty years ago lived near Als a maiden hight Agnete Einarsdatter. Her father was a yeoman, well-to-do by his neighbors’ reckoning, and she was very fair, so she ought to have made a good marriage. But one eventide when she walked alone on the beach, a merman came forth and wooed her. He lured her away with him, and she passed eight years in sin and godlessness beneath the sea.

  “At last she happened to bring her newest babe up onto a skerry that it might drink sunlight. This was in earshot of the church bells, and while she sat rocking the cradle, they began to chime. Homesickness, if not repentance, awoke in her. She went to the merman and begged leave to go hear again the word of God. He gave unwilling consent and took her ashore. Beforehand he made her vow not to do three things---let down her long hair, as if she were unwedded; seek out her mother in the family pew; and bow down when the priest named the All Highest. But each of these she did: the first for pride, the second for love, the third for awe. Then divine grace drew the scales from her eyes and she stayed on land.

  “Afterward the merman came in search of her. It was another holy day and he found her at Mass. When he walked into the church, the pictures and images turned their faces to the wall. None of the congregation dared lift hand against him, he was so huge and strong. He pleaded with her to return, and well might he have prevailed as aforetime. For this is not a hideous race with fish tails, my lord. Save that they have broad, webbed feet and big, slanting eyes, and the men among them are beardless, and some have green or blue hair-on the whole, they look like beau-tiful humans. His own locks were golden as hers. And he did not threaten, he spoke in tones of love and sorrow.

  “Yet God strengthened Agnete. She refused him and he went back beneath the waters.

  “Her father had the prudence, and the dowry, to get her wed inland. They say she was never cheerful, and before long she died.”

  “If it was a Christian death,” the bishop said, “I cannot see that lasting harm was done.”

  “But the merfolk are still there, my lord!” cried the provost.

  “Fishermen see them often, romping and laughing in the waves. Does that not make a poor toiler, who dwells in a wretched hut with an ugly wife, ill content, yes, even questioning of God’s justice? And when will another merman seduce another maiden, this time forever? That is the more likely now when those children of Agnete and her lover are grown. They come ashore almost as a habit, they have struck up friendships with some of the boys and young men-more than friendship, I heard tell, for the female among them.

  “My lord, this is Satan’s work! If we let souls be lost that were in our charge, how shall we answer on the Last Day?”

  The bishop frowned and rubbed his chin. “You have right. What shall we do, though? If the Alsmen already do what is forbidden, a further ban will hardly check them; I know those stiff-necked fisherfolk. And if we send to the King for knights and troopers, how shall they go beneath the sea?”

  Magnus raised a finger. It blazed from him: “My lord, I have studied matters of this kind and know the cure. Those merfolk may not be demons, but the soulless must ever flee when God’s word is properly laid on them. Have I your leave to conduct an exorcism?”

  “You do,” said the bishop shakenly, “and with it my blessing.”

  So it came about that Magnus returned to Als. More men-at-

  arms than usual clattered behind him, lest the villagers make trouble. These watched, some eager for any newness, some surly, a few weeping, as the archdeacon had himself rowed out to a spot above the underwater town. And there, with bell, book, and can-dle, he solemnly cursed the sea people and bade them in God’s
name forever be gone.

  II

  TAUNO, oldest child of fair Agnete and the Liri king, had counted his twenty-first winter. There waS great merrymaking in his honor, feast, song, dances that wove their flitting patterns north, east, west, south, up, down, and around, between the shells and mirrors and golden plates which flung back the seaflTe lighting the royal hall; there were gifts, cunningly wrought, not alone of gold and amber and narwhal ivory, but also of pearl and lacy rosy coral, brought from afar by travelers throughout the centuries; there were contests in swimming, wrestling, harpooning, music, and rune-craft; there was lovemaking in dim rooms which had no roof because none was needed, and in the rippling gardens of red, green, purple, and brown weed where jellyfish drifted like white and blue blossoms and true fish darted like meteors.

  Afterward Tauno went on a long hunt. Though the merfolk lived off the waters, he fared this time in sport, mostly to visit anew the grandeur of the Norway fjords. With him came the girls Rinna and Raxi, for his pleasure and their own. They had a joyful trip, which meant much to Tauno; he was often a sober one among his lighthearted kindred, and sometimes fell into dark broodings.

  They were homebound, Liri was in sight, when the wrath struck them.

  “Yonder it is!” Rinna called eagerly. She darted ahead. The green tresses streamed down her slim white back. Raxi stayed near Tauno. She swam laughing around and around him; as she passed below, she would stroke fingers over his face or loins. He grabbed for her with the same playfulness, but always she was out of reach. “Niaahr’ she taunted while blowing him bubbly kisses. He grinned and swam steadily on. Having inherited their mother’s shape of foot, the halfling children were less swift and deft in the water than tJ1eir father’s race. Nevertheless, a landman would have gasped at their movement. And they got about more readily on shore than their cousins; and they had been born able to live undersea, without need for the spells that had kept their mother from death by drowning, salt, or chill; and the cool-fleshed mer-folk liked to embrace their warmer bodies.