Winterking (1987) Read online

  FIRST YEARW OOD, THEN U N D ERSEA , AND NOW ...

  VOLUME THREE OF THE ACCLAIMED FANTASY EPIC

  THE FINNBRANCH TRILOGY

  WINTC1RKING

  PAUL HHZ6L

  2 6 9 4 5 3 * IN U S S3/5l)'(IN C A N AD A $ 4 9 5 )

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  _ # A 8 A N TA M .SP E C TR A BOOK

  TH E

  FINNBRANCH TRILO G Y

  _______ BY PAUL HAZEL

  VOI.UHL ONE:

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  “ One of the best

  high fantasies in some time.”

  -

  —Publishers Weekly

  5S

  “A dark, strikingly original book.”

  E-

  -IVterS. Beagle

  2T

  “ In the spirit

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  of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.”

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  I he Siientmcnlo Btr

  -E

  VOLUML TW O :

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  UND6RS6A

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  “ The reader is accorded glimpses

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  of an enchanted world, a world of

  shore and sea, not ours,

  and yet echoing in the mind like

  something long ago lost and

  forever missed."

  Ku.ierl Mi Kinley,

  author ol the Hie Ilero ,ind the ( rown

  “DEAR CALLAGHAN”

  He folded the single page over and set it aside.

  He had killed before, both with his own hands and by

  proxy. He had never pretended, as men often did, that both

  cases were not very much the same, but he had been at it

  longer and had less reason to lie to himself. The wars in

  which he had taken his first heads and left the bubbling necks

  empty were no longer remembered; the lands over which he

  had fought were no longer lands, but ocean. Yet he had never

  failed to understand what it meant or what a powerful thing it

  was to take a life or to be less frightened by it.

  He did not expect to be understood. He knew that not

  even the most rugged men now living could have lived as he

  had lived, gone where he had gone, or done what, to the

  horror of his soul, he had had to do.

  1 must ca ll you again into service, he wrote at last.

  H ousem an, fa ilin g , is d ea d a n d I sh all trust no on e else in this

  en terp rise. I have no o th er rew ard to o ffe r you except my

  affection ; he stopped, then added, everlastingly.

  Beneath the tiny printed letters he set a large cursive “W"

  Bantam Spectra books also by Paul Hazel

  Y EA R W O O D

  U N D ER SE A

  (Volumes 1 and II of T he Finnbranch)

  WINTERKING

  Volume III of The Finnhranch

  Paul Hazel

  BANTAM BOOKS

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON • SYDNEY • AUCKLAND

  This low-priced Bantam Book

  has been completely reset in a type fa ce

  designed fo r easy reading, and was printed

  from new plates. It contains the complete

  text o f the original hard-cover edition.

  NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED.

  W IN T ER IN G

  A Bantam Spectra Book / published by arrangement with

  Atlantic Monthly Press

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Atlantic Monthly Press edition published October 1985

  Bantam Spectra edition / December 1987

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1985 by Paul Hazel.

  C over art copyright © 1987 by Mel Odom.

  Library o f Congress Catalog C ard Number: 85-47786

  This book may not be reproduced in whole o r in part, by

  m im eograph or any other means, toithout permission.

  For information address: Atlantic Monthly Press,

  8 Arlington Street, Boston MA 02116

  ISBN 0-553-26945-3

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark, consisting o f the words ”Bantam Books" and the portrayal o f a rooster.; is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam

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  P R I N T E D I N T H E U N I T E D S T A T E S O F A M E R I C A

  o

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Natalie Greenberg

  Ah, it’s a long stage, and no inn in sight,

  and night coming and the body cold.

  — Herman Melville

  in a letter to Nathaniel Nawthorne

  I .

  The River

  1

  .

  The photographs of that time, printed from glass plate

  negatives, reveal a landscape at once more barren and

  roomy, a world puzzlingly larger (not merely less cluttered)

  than the world bequeathed to 11s. The pastures to either side

  of the Housetenuc, the sixty river miles between Devon and

  New Awanux, had then only lately begun to close again with

  trees. But the trees are small, all second growth; the men do

  not as yet seem uncomfortable beside them. Their expressions reflect no amazement at the huge bald earth nor any knowledge of their little place in it. Their reputation for being

  perceptive, while not entirely undeserved, did not truly

  encompass the land. To them it was Eden though the fires of

  workshops and mills made a twilight by midday over the

  rutted hills. The lie which their fathers had carried across the

  Atlantic persisted with the sons. But the land had never been

  Eden, 'not even when a wilderness of gloomy wood had

  covered the valley. The last naked men living along the upper

  reaches where the river was narrow and stands of sycamore

  still crowded out the sun knew all the while it was Hobbamocko,

  not Jehovah, who ruled there. The English, however, who

  had covered their genitals far longer than they had been a

  nation or gone over the sea, never asked them.

  So it happened that Jehovah’s white clapboard houses,

  like a species of mechanical mushroom, sprang up inexhaustibly.

  There were four on the Stratford flats. In New Awanux itself

  there were twenty. Old Qkanuck, son of Ansantawae, the

  wind of memory blowing across his mind, sat laughing merrily in the corner of the longhouse and struck his hams. Alone, he had burned seven of Jehovah’s houses, had walked up to

  them boldly across the green commons, bearing a torch in

  3

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  WINTERKING

  each hand. The ghosts of those burnings still flamed in his

  eyes. The warriors saw it and were cheered.

  “The land did not want them,” old Okanuck said. “If it

  had, those houses would have grown back, like the madarch,

  drawing their substance from the bones of the buried wood.

  So our longhouses grew then, year after year in the same

  place, nested in the damp, in the oak-shade, taking their

  strength from the ground.”

  A smile sank in his toothless mouth. Like the earth he

  had darkness inside of him. And foxcubs and black birds, he

  maintained, shaking with laughter. And a thousand oak trees,

  windstorms and the seeds of spiders. �
�Only see that I am

  planted deep,” he howled gleefully, "and I will grow a world

  again. A better world.” Old Okanuck winked. “No Awanux.”

  They gave him his pipe.

  When the silence had lasted for many heartbeats, a boy

  with thunderous brows reached across to touch the old one’s

  shoulder. The faces of the men turned on him disapprovingly.

  But Okanuck, setting the pipe aside, gave him an encouraging nod.

  “The Awanux are many,” the boy said angrily.

  Okanuck did not take the boy any less seriously but

  grinned. “We are more,” he said kindly. With a sweep of his

  outsi/.ed hands he motioned the boy to sit nearer and to share

  the pipe. Okanuck watched as the boy parted his lips and

  sucked in great quantities of maggoty smoke. But, though the

  smoke filled the boy’s chest, inside there was emptiness. The

  smoke was drawn in and lost.

  “O nce,” the boy said, uncomforted. “Perhaps it was

  different then. But now it is they who increase.”

  Okanuck leaned forward. “They are only a frost,” he said

  slyly, “a frost on Cupheag, on Metichanwon, a chilly smear

  on Ohomowauke. . . .” His brows were lifted. Despite his age

  his hair was black as oak-shade. “Who, knowing the frost,” he

  asked, “fears it?”

  Outside the longhouse the valley was sealed by cloud.

  Okanuck felt no resentment. He laughed.

  “The earth is under it,” Okanuck said. “Deep down.

  Undying.” Gingerly, with the clawed edge of his toes, he dug

  for lice, scratching in the mat of dense feathers on the

  underside of his black and cobalt wings.

  The River

  5

  “Crows?”

  “Surely not,” was the immediate answer. “Dark, nameless

  birds. The type doesn’t matter. But water birds of some sort,

  I should think— though, of course, the shapes are drawn from

  the earth, not the river.” He smiled. “. . . Pulled aloft from

  the fields and then transformed, one pattern to the next, until

  they soar.” Turning in his desk chair, the speaker pointed.

  “The white birds, on the other hand, emerge directly from

  the sky ”

  He paused, appearing to search for a phrase which, in

  fact, he knew quite precisely. “As though,” he began again,

  “some quality in the white horizon. . . in the whiteness

  itself. . . exactly matches the whiteness of the birds.” He let

  that sink in. “See, near the top— to the left of the center

  line— how the birds begin all at once, sky and birds in one

  tessellation— simultaneously. You do see it?”

  The younger man nodded but continued to examine the

  woodcut of white and black birds silently.

  Pleased with his explanation, the speaker went on smiling. He was perhaps a decade older than the younger man, just a shade past thirty and already balding. The woodcut

  hung on the south wall of the study. It had taken him the

  better part of six months to save for the print. Now as his

  gaze traveled appreciatively over the repeated images of

  birds, his sense of uneasiness in the younger man grew a bit

  sharper. Yet for another moment he chose to ignore it. He

  tipped a little farther back in his chair.

  His name was George Harwood. He was an assistant

  professor of Awanux. He had a blonde wife and a five-year-

  old daughter, neither of whom he could quite afford. He lived

  with both in three cramped rooms in the basement of West

  Bridge Hall, where individual scholars before him had lived

  since the time of its founding. His duties, for which he was

  paid only slightly more than the wage of an instructor,

  included tutoring a dozen or so of the more promising young

  men. And this young man, with his long, odd, unboyish face,

  was accounted to be the most promising.

  Indeed, Harwood had long since been aware of a twinge

  of jealousy whenever he considered Will Wykeham. Harwood

  himself had once been thought of as something of a prodigy, a

  man to be watched. This was not boasting. When he was

  barely nineteen he had produced a thousand-page study of

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  W1NTERKING

  the myths of the Flying Dutchman, a study of such scope and

  interest that, he had been assured, with a very little tightening

  it might well have found a berth at the college press. But

  there had been interruptions. He had been burdened with

  other matters and the work had dragged on without completion.

  Wykeham, of course, had yet to accomplish anything of

  equal breadth or learning, a paper on Chaucer, a few brief

  articles on Milton, jewel-like, it was said, nearly perfect but

  on a small scale. The younger man had a talent for appearing

  to inhabit the author’s world, an instinct for the nuances of

  language now fallen out of use, an instinct which permitted

  him to suggest a number of rather clever interpretations,

  wonderfully clear once he mentioned them but previously

  escaping the attention of more seasoned scholars. The senior

  faculty noticed him. On one occasion hearing Wykeham

  deliver a paper on Paradise L ost the Dean himself had

  whispered discreetly to Harwood, “One might well suppose

  the boy had lived in the Garden and had spoken personally

  with the Snake.” Harwood’s mouth had twitched up at the

  corners. The Dean, who was a kindly man and inclined to

  like undergraduates indiscriminately, promptly forgot the remark. It was envy that caused Harwood to remember it nearly half a year until at Greenchurch, on the edge of panic,

  the words came back to him.

  Beyond the window the river was blurred with cloud.

  Having turned away from the woodcut, Harwood found

  the younger man looking at him intently. For an instant

  Harwood had the curious feeling he was staring directly into

  the blank March weather. The eyes, while not large, conveyed

  an almost overwhelming bleakness, as though through their

  slight openings Harwood glimpsed the cold mist and the hills

  beyond them, fading north in the rain. But it was the long

  square face that had most shaken him. The strong features,

  gathered close to the center, left an expanse of unexpected

  whiteness. It was a face with room in it. Whatever trouble

  had momentarily set its mark there, the face itself, with a

  surprising sense of quiet, remained essentially free of concern. Harwood found himself suddenly ill at ease.

  “You said they reminded you of crows,” he said unevenly.

  “I’m sorry. Not really.” Wykeham’s voice came from

  miles off. “I was just thinking of crows.” For a time the

  younger man looked past him, staring through the window at

  The River

  7

  a clump of elms set off at the edge of the broad college lawn.

  "I saw one this morning. A great scrufly-looking fellow. Too

  big for a shore crow. It was waiting for me by the post office

  gate when I went for the mail.”

  “Waiting?”

  Wykeham’s frown vanished. “I think so,” he said. His

  eyes turned abruptly toward Harwood. “You might say a

&nbs
p; prophet of doom.” Wykeham reached across his chest and

  into the inner pocket of his jacket and drew forth an envelope. He dropped it on the desk in front of Harwood.

  “You may read it,” Wykeham said. “But the short of it is,

  I shall be leaving New Awanux by Saturday.”

  With one pink hand Harwood reached halfway to the

  letter. Both men shared a love of light holiday literature.

  Harwood lifted an eyebrow, “Oughtn’t you have said,” he

  bantered, “ I must be gone before morning’?”

  Wykeham managed to smile and sigh all at once. “Really,

  George, this is serious. You might at least have a look.”

  The envelope was addressed: William Wykeham, Esq.,

  College Station, New Awanux-on-Housetenuc. The address,

  set down in yellowish-brown ink, was large and florid, with

  much embellishment and too many capitals. Harwood glanced

  at it dubiously before pulling out four sheets of white paper.

  He laid the letter on the desk in front of him and began to

  read.

  “My Dear Mr. Wykeham, Undoubtedly the lawyers have

  informed you of the untimely demise of Michael Morag.

  Clearly your guardian was a just man and died peacefully (as

  his service deserved), leaving your affairs in good order and

  myself, as I believe those same lawyers must dutifully have

  written you, to manage and discharge them in his place. I

  regret I had not the pleasure of meeting him. Indeed he must

  have been a most pleasant man as is well evidenced by the

  comforts of the parsonage wherein for so many years he

  resided, where I (by terms and covenants of the Will and by

  my appointment lately to this parish) consider myself now

  fortunate to have established my own household.

  “I am told that yourself you never met the Reverend Mr.

  Morag, although it cannot be more, at least not greatly more

  (if it is not too discourteous to remind you), than sixty miles

  from New Awanux to your properties here in Devon, and th e

  trains run w ith some frequency! But then, of course, you have

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  WINTERKING

  been traveling and had only come to these shores, as it were,

  and at that for the first time, when you matriculated and have