The Stolen Sun Read online

  "What a beauty!"

  "All is as you instructed me, Waino. I'm surprised myself that I remembered what the boy you sent told me. I know you are a singer, and wizard, too, they. say, but—"

  "A boy, you say?"

  "Jo. A boy. With careful instructions about what you wanted for this hunting trip, whatever—"

  "Tell me about the boy."

  Kauppi shrugged. "An ugly choice, if I may say so, and surly to boot. Name of Kuhervo. He pounded on the door in die middle of the night, frightening Aüti into a fit. He would not come in, just stood there like a Hüsi's thing rattling off your instructions and saying I must drop everything for your needs. I must have everything ready by this day, he said, then vanished into the forest like a troll."

  Wayne started to ask more, changed his mind. "No matter, as long as the work is done."

  "But I am explaining, Waino, that it is not done! Instead of well-tempered yew or oak the bow is of iron laced with silver and cord of Saari's doehide, as you see, and—" He shrugged his wide shoulders in bewilderment. "Beautiful, jo. I take much pride in my workmanship and will create nothing slipshod. Yet, if I may say so, it is impractical. It will kill nothing!"

  The crossbow shone in his hands. Wayne felt the well-crafted weapon sing and vibrate with starborn power when he bent it, notched the cord, and thumbed it. A treasure for a star-king. Yet, more was needed.

  TfU

  "It suits me well," he assured Kauppi. "All that is needed is the song-magic for the finishing touch, and I must be the one to sing this into the crossbow if I am to wield it with any hope of success."

  "Against what, friend?"

  "Against Hüsi's Elk!"

  Kauppi made one final effort to dissuade Wayne from his impossible venture into the North, then, seeing it was useless, strapped on the snowshoes for him, helped him into his heavy gear for the frozen trek, and himself fastened the shoulder harness on that held the weapons, the silver-shot javelin, the curved crossbow that gleamed with blue fire, and the sheaf of red-gold arrows to go with it.

  The Lapp's years of following the reindeer herds provided Wayne with a crude fawnhide map of his initial week's trek before he would reach the table of highland of which Louhi had spoken; that which lived in the souls of the Vanhat as a half-legendary place of demonaic winds and evil monsters, a shunned nowhere.

  Wayne slept as best he could, huddled against the looming scarp, the Top of the World. His belly ached from his steady diet of dried venison, hard cakes, and tea. Up this far north and at this season, there were not to be found even the tufts of summer grasses which the Lapps shared with their herds for vegetable nutrient. And his brain roiled at the prospect of facing the teratogenic animal of Hüsi when the twilight glimmer that served for night was ended. Still, he was exhausted, and finally he slept.

  The climb was straight up and fraught with peril at every toehold. He dared not stop, once he got started. The wind plucked at his parka and his climber's pickax faltered more than once, so it must have been his throat-tom screams to Ukko that prevailed. His numbed hand groped upward like a thing apart from him and possessed, while he clung to the fragile axhold with the other.

  Like a miracle, the lip of the table did curve inward when that last upreach came. He strained himself, shivering with a kind of insane desire to let go and fall, now that his exhausting feat was over. He slid, screaming. His blunted axblade caught a projection of rock under the blue snow crust, held. It was like Jumala's hand, grasping his, offering silent courage when the too-far point had been scaled.

  He flung himself in a crashing spraddle across the icing of snow at the table's edge. He lay there, numb and helpless, for a long time, sucking in dribbles of oxygen from the thin spacial atmosphere. His attenuated muscle cells begged for sustenance as his lungs begged for oxygen; he fumbled a stony cake of rye flour and the dregs of the dried deer from his pack and chomped, without much interest in living, mechanically; then fiercely, when the blood began to burn in his veins and force itself through the numbed capillaries of his frozen members. He would not let Louhi defeat him! Damn her black soul! He had an impossible task to perform and he would do it, pushing aside death and despair at every step!

  I will, he sobbed. I mill!

  His jelled tissues stung, reviving; he moved to a sit and then up on his feet, by spurts and limping muscle jerks.

  Then he snuffled the wind like an animal on the scent. Yes. It was there: A kind of rank unholy spoor borne down on the driving wind. He pricked up his ears for sound of the Elk, above the mindless roaring of the gale that sucked up snow and made whirled grotesque sculptures of it on the wide plateau.

  Nothing, first. Then-

  A faint snuffling, a series of low snorting shrieks. The animal had detected that something new had been added.

  There was an intruder up here at the World's Top, someone who might provide a moment's fun and games before the monster vented his anger at such impudence.

  Now a roaring bellow, a sustained stentorian resonance that shattered the sky. Trumpeting challenge and bane, it swept across the nightmarish flat like an Ukko gone mad. The terror it carried with it turned Wayne's knees to pudding and his heart to curdled milk. For seconds, no more. k

  "Ukko!" he shouted. "Stay by my side!"

  He whirled, straining his eyes across the field of white grotesquerie for sight of the animal. Nothing. Now the sound stopped and the echoes of it battered him from all sides. There was a craftiness about the silence that followed. Even the wind lowered to a maniacal moaning.

  To move toward it was the sheerest land of stupidity; his whole organism rebelled against such an act. Yet he forced his legs to move, to take up the hunt. Under a sky like polished slate he pushed wind in the direction of the strongest scent.

  Then he saw it.

  Hüsi's Elk was indeed a thing- of enormous size. Its bulk was enough in itself to frighten a man into a gibbering primal jelly-thing. This must have be^en how the first caveman felt, encountering Tyrannus Rex for the first time. The intense compulsion to be dead, to burst his heart by sheer effort of will and thus relieve himself of such an excess of horror and basic mind-destroying fear.

  And Hüsi's Elk was worse.

  This black bulk, looming against the steel sky, was created by malignant magic and was indestructible.

  Lizards and all manner of small creeping things clawed at Wayne's spine. For a split second his heart did stop beating. Then—as if to die and get it over with—he moved. Closer to the dark monstrous shape.

  Hüsi's Elk did not move. The great raping antlers were like a small forest against the weak-eyed sun behind the beast, limrfing its incredible hugeness in sooty silhouette. It seemed to linger on the brink of the juggernaut's rush that would, in another moment, sieze hold of Wayne like a toy and impale him on that forest of spikes, play with him a while, then toss him screaming off the lip of the escarpment.

  Wayne crouched, forgetting fear. He gripped out the spear Kauppi had made for him, aimed it well and fast. It left his shoulder-thrust heave with a prayer to Ukko riding on it. And it struck home! It hit the animal in the whitish chest where its heart was if it had one. It hit deep.

  Still Hüsi's Elk did not move.

  Wayne began to be cold with gripping fear* and wonder, still his hands moved to notch an arrow into the crossbow. He took careful aim. He scowled at the immobile bulk. It was then the roaring trumpet spoke again, louder than thunder, closer. And it came from behind him.

  He cried out in fear while he spun around. Now he knew! He knew! Hüsi was filled with tricks, like his brightest pupil, Witch Louhi. The hulk into which he had lost his spear was made out of rotted logs and willow-branches and swamp roots. Its hide was of pine bark; its eyes were frozen globes of ice. And while he wasted his strength and his prayers on this mockery, Hüsi's Elk was circling him for the kill.

  The unholy/beast trumpeted again, pawing the snow.

  Then it moved, like a wall.

  Its eyes gl
owed with crimson hellfire; its foul breath troughed the snowcrust like a blast from some baleful Hüsi's furnace. Wayne screamed in primeval terror, but his reflexes, out of astute training, plummeted him out of the catapult-wall's path in a sidewise roll of sudden motion.

  The beast missed.

  Redirecting its bulk was a slow matter. So was Wayne's unballing and floundering to his feet. Again the mind-shattering roar, rageful now, and confident.

  Wayne's hands shivered on the crossbow, fumbling out an arrow for the one lost somewhere in that wild tumble. He tried to tell himself: it is the fear. The elemental fear of what Hüsi has spatoned.

  "Do not fear! Show no fear!" It was as if Wainomoinen's voice, calmly decisive, were counseling him as he did during the wizard's lessons. To demonstrate fear of the thing was the first step toward defeat.

  Wayne mumbled the Law to himself, and prayed to the Power of the Valmis, while he notched a gold arrow into the crossbow and aimed it squarely at the creature barreling down on him. To his astonishment, the beast gave a wild shriek and wheeled.

  Hüsi's Elk ran from the magic crossbow! Ran like a great panicked ox. Wayne leaped up with a cry. To have the creature elude him, escape, was equal to having it kill him— in Louhi's evil eyes. His impossible chore was to kill it and bring her its antlers. Nothing less would do.

  "Ukko!" he cried silently. Tut wings on my boots!"

  He ran like wind, like Itsu himself.

  Worlds fled by in the chase. Suns were born and suns died in sputtering anguish. Over all the wastes of Hüsi's bleak domain did he follow the beast. Over all the heathers of Kalma. Before the gaping maw of Surma, the star-serpent; behind the towers of evil Lempo; beyond the cascading borealis; beyond the pole and into the stars themselves. Hissi's Elk ran. Wayne Panu ran. He ran and the Power of the Vanhat Valmis ran with him, carrying him along on the wind that fans the tapestry that Ilmater weaves on her rainbow above time and eternity.

  When the beast found itself at a brink, a drop, it slowed, snorting and panting and pawing the ice. Its great tongue lolled from its efforts; its lips shuddered and slavered. Those lambent red eyes, like suns when the forests of Tapio burn, glared back at its pursuer. Which way? Which way now? It chose a rising headland spotted with dry trees like witch's fingers; it reached the high place and now it was cut off.

  From the scant spiny shelter of the witch copse, Wayne notched his arrow, knelt on one knee, and took aim.

  "Ukko!" he prayed. "Enemy of Hüsi and all things loathsome! I am your weapon! My body, my mind, and my soul are of you now. I am the smallest part of the smallest part of your totality. Still—I am of you and of the Power!"

  He made the crossbow sing its magic song.

  Hüsi's Elk fell, screaming.

  XI

  Loum looked down from her green throne; Wayne stood, legs apart, among the antlers as if in the middle of some spiny thicket. He said nothing, waiting, while the witch rumbled with grudging admissions of his success in having accomplished his first impossible task. Hüsi's Elk was dead and here was the proof of it.

  "They will go well over the great entrance to the Castle's feasting-hall," Loubi gloated. "My demon friends from the Black Nebula will be jealous."

  "You are pleased with me?"

  "With the antlers, yes."

  Her shrunken bones writhed and made flames of the iridescent robes. Now LouBi held up one finger. "I am pleased with you to this extent, Starman. As to your second impossible task, it must be more than just impossible. Impossible, it seems, is too easy. Let me see…" She fumbled her snake-stick in her black claws, blinking her ophidian eyes rapidly for a long moment. "Yes! I have it! The Serpents of Manala! Yes. That shall be your second trifling chore. You must plow off the heads of the thousand serpents that live within the quaking bogs of Manala, and bring them to me for the evil magic wntained in their venom."

  Wayne faced the Hag without a flinch. Louhi would despise him and destroy him if he showed one trace of fear. He must not allow himself the luxury of despair. But —the slimy, sucking Marshes of Manala I The trembling fen of the loathsome White Worms! It was impossible to stand upon its treacherous reaches or to endure the noisome stench that bubbled up from its bottomless depths—much less to be expected to lop off all those abominable heads!

  "Well?" Louhi demanded irritably. "Shall we forget the whole thing?" She sounded mockingly eager about it.

  "No, Mistress," Wayne found himself shouting. "I will do this'trifling chore for you. But," he added, leering, "may I sleep with Varjo first?"

  Louhi cackled, raw-throated. She assumed a pose of an indignant parent. "You may not, lecher! What do you think this island is?"

  Wayne forced a sardonic laugh. "I think many things, Mistress, but I prefer to keep my thoughts to myself."

  "And well you should,* she grumbled. "You may eat and sauna and sleep, no more. If you perform this impossible task nicely for me, I will permit you to at least see Varjo."

  Wayne bowed.

  "Thank you, kind Mistress."

  None less than Ilmarinen the Wondersmith would do for his needfuls in performing the impossible task that Louhi had laid out for him this time. The plowshare that would behead the White Worms of Manala must be sung by the sky-forger himself, Ilmarinen of the red beard, maker of the incredible Star Mill.

  Wayne sought the smith out in his rocky cave. It was here that Ilmarinen had found, long ago, the residual rainbow metals of Otava, of the ships that had brought the Vanhat to Terra in times too dim to contemplate. Here the Power was strong. Here in this lonely cavern on a cliff like a star's wuig Wayne found a younger Ilmarinen than he knew, stripped to the waist so that the matted copper wires on his muscled chest dripped with wet, and the orange fire from the gaping forge fired his red beard redder and leaped in his deepset blue eyes.

  His eagle, wise Virrokannas, who soared the country round while the sorcerer was at his tasks and warned his master of interlopers, swooped down to observe Wayne and flutter his great wings in warning. At a word from Ilmarinen the steel-penned creature returned to his niche above the forge, yet kept his jaundice-yellow eyes alert for mischief.

  "Jo," said Ilmarinen, after thought, "I can build you such a plowshare. It will be of silver interlaced with the Otavan rainbows at its cutting edge. I will sing into it the Power, so that it will cut their heads off, well enough. But how shall you stand fast on the shivering marshes to use it?"

  Wayne's smile was a grim pitiful thing. "I have thought long on my task. It is in my mind that you shall create for me a robot horse with some kind of anit-gravitational device built in that will-"

  "Nün," the smith interrupted. "None of your Ussi nonsense, young Waino! With whom have you been consorting, of late?"

  Wayne grinned wryly. "Only our old friend the Hag of the Rock."

  Ilmarinen's eyes flashed like sapphires. He stroked his beard and poked at the fire until the sparks danced ballets. "Let me see if I understand your toista words. You wish me to build you a horse with wings that will bear you up a span above the swamp, and the silver plowshare as well. A steed of gold whose nimble feet can withstand the corrosion of the worms' venom."

  "Precisely, friend Ilmarinen. And now to work. There is not one moment to waster

  "Why the hurry?" the copper-beard grumbled.

  "There are those who cannot bear the sunless cold much longer," Wayne told him cryptically.

  Ilmarinen shrugged. "Then you must help me to find and melt down the ores we shall need. Think you stand by and idle while I build you these playthings?" Ilmarinen's growl turned into a grin, always a surprise on that long, dour, copper-clad countenance.

  Together they toiled, wrenching both gold and silver from the bowels of the mountain. And rare earths such as wolfram, samarium, gadolinium and thulium.

  And where they could find them, miniscule flecks of the Otavan metal that glowed on their fingertips with all the colors of Ilmatar's rainbow. While they mined and melted, they sang. They sang the old son
gs of Power. And presently Ilmarinen's hammer sang with them, striking the iron anvil in boisterous rhythms which echoed across the cave and far into the fingers that groped down into the mountain in search of ancient secrets. The magic of the Old Songs was meshed and molded into every reshaping of the shining marriage-of-metals.

  Wayne gaped at the golden steed with the rainbow hooves and quivered a sigh for its beauty. And at the silver plowshare Ilmarinen had fastened behind the wooden saddle he had carved with runic symbols.

  "Now I am ready!"

  "Not so fast, Wainol You will need armor against the deadly spittle of the serpents and their high-leaping fangs."

  "Whatever you say, friend Ilmar."

  Shoes of iron streaked with the rainbows, a mail-coat of red gold, gauntlets made of thunderstones from the sky, greaves of gleaming steel. All these Ilmarinen hammered and sang for him, while Wayne manned the bellows and fed the insatiable fire.

  Wayne asked Ilmarinen the way to the Marshes of Man-ala but it was Virrokannas the eagle who left his perch with an impatient shriek and skimmed the sooted rock ceiling toward the daylight.

  "He will guide your Kulta, your fleetfoot. Not that you need any Virrokannas to show you the way. All men know the way to Manala; all men go there some time in their lives, be it only in their minds. Hüsi himself is happy to point out one of a multitude of devious paths."

  Wayne pulled Kulta's reins short on the hillock of long blowing grasses and windflowers where the eagle had left him. He watched its dark shape dwindle in the wash of golden afternoon sunlight. He sighed when Virrokannas vanished. The blithe song of the cuckoo in the lacy tamarack forest on the hills he had left served to accent his unease, his loneliness. Such a glorious June day. Back in those green hills, with their rushing streams and neat patches of bursting grain on the slopes and bottomland, the cosy farmhouses, all was serene and bountiful. Wayne remembered the Proxima farm of his boyhood, the com stalks shining in neat rows under the sawtooth fangs of barren crystal. He felt a sharp pang.