The Star Mill Page 7

  "They found it in the bowels of a copper mountain, under subtle locks. It took all of Vainomoinen's wizard-power to open them and prevent the shrieking alarms with which they had been equipped. Then, carrying the Sampo to the lead ship, they embarked and Ilmarinen prayed to the winds and to Ahto, the master of all waters, to speed them on their way home.

  "Storm-demons roused Louhi from her deep slumber. When she discovered that the locks had been broken and the Sampo taken, she shrieked her vengeance all the way to the Black Nebula. Her fury was terrible to behold, so that all quailed and fled, lest she take it out on those within her reach. Gathering up her best magic, she created a dreadful storm, to lash across the broad sea and strike the heroes' ships. She woke even Iku-Turso, unspeakable son of Aijo, from his mindless sleep at the bottom of the sea where he lurked in hiding from Jumala. Iku-Turso lifted his hideous head out of the water and blew his breath at the Sampo Expedition so that many of the ships floundered and sank. She caused the Mist-Maiden to weave a dense fog across the ocean so that the heroes' ship became separated from the rest.

  "When the three heroes saw Iku-Turso they shivered with unspeakable dread. Even brash Lemminkainen, the golden youth, shivered and cried out for his mother, Ilmatar, Creatrix of the Universe, to save them. But Vainomoinen, of the ancient bones, knew the Word of Origin. He related to Iku-Turso, son of Aijo, of his monstrous beginnings on far forgotten stars, of his monstrous race being destroyed by Jumala, of he alone escaping to this modest uninhabited planet of molten fire. The Word of Origin did its work before Iku-Turso's hideous breath could destroy them all: he sank back to his lurk-place at the earth's center, lest Jumala find him, too.

  "Louhi had meanwhile equipped a great armada of war vessels to pursue the heroes and bring back the Star Mill. The fog was so heavy that Ilmarinen's ships lost their way, drifting in aimless fashion on the black benighted seas. Louhi found them. There was a great battle.

  The thousands of warriors fought. Bravely. But in the end it was magic against magic. Vainomoinen against Louhi.

  "Louhi took the form of a great black eagle, swooping down to flap her great wings and cackle her fury from the ship's masthead.

  "Ilmarinen sprang in front of the Sampo with his silver crossbow, Lemminkainen with his sword, while old Vainomoinen, in his curious robes, lingered at the back of it, singing the magic that would keep the witch at bay.

  " 'Louhir Ilmarinen cried. 7 am the one who forged this Star Mill. I did not get paid for my world'

  'My daughter was yours for the taking!' screamed the witch. 'She still is. What more do you wantF

  " 'Can we not share this wonderful thing? Surely there is enough within it for all, since it's powers of creation are endless?

  " 'Never! Never! Til not divide the Sampo with anyone! It's mine—mine alone!'"

  Kaleva paused in his story, letting his quivering hands drop to his lap. While he coughed and shuddered from his exertions and the weight of unknown years rattling those brittle bones, Ilmar stood up and paced. He stared up at the fading but still-vivid tapestry of Ilmarinen, the Wondersmith. The smith, in the tapestry, was pictured at his forge. Like Ilmar's, his short well-trimmed beard was of curling copper, his eyes space-blue but iced with wintry stars. Unlike the wizard's gorgeous trappings which Vainomoinen wore, holding his kantele, stroking its magical strings while he sang songs of great portent—or Lemminkainen, the handsome, beardless, golden-haired youth, shown smiling in the midst of battle—Ilmarinen was grimly intent on drawing a flaming sword out of a cauldron whose surface was a dazzling spectrum of dancing color.

  Behind Ilmar, while he squinted up at what looked like himself tripled in the tapestry, Kaleva was pontificating.

  "Greed is the greatest sin, because it leads to all the others. Conquest of individuals or worlds. Coveting what another has. Murder, carnage, to satisfy it. It shrivels the soul and takes away all that is honorable in a man."

  Ilmar whirled, flexing his shoulders in impatience.

  "What happened to the Star Mill?"

  "The conflict between Vainomoinen and the Witch carried it far up in the air. It fell from Louhi's eagle-claws. It was presumed to have been broken into a million pieces and lost to the world forever."

  "But it wasn't?"

  "No. It was damaged, twisted into a grotesque mass of rainbow-color and alien metal—but Louhi returned after the wild storm to the spot where it vanished. She retrieved it, and by her own wicked sorcery she made it work again. But in reverse! It can no longer absorb molecules out of space and create things from them. All it can do is destroy. Whatever comes within its domination is seized and shredded into molecular matter of a destructive nature."

  Ilmar whistled.

  "The Black Storm!"

  "Yes. Many centuries ago Louhi set it to work out among the stars, hoping to make it the treasure-house it was before it fell. But Louhi's magic is black and evil. What came out as eternal bounty with Ilmarinen, came out in reverse, when impelled by her blasphemous sorcery. Ironically, Louhi found herself and her storm-haunted island trapped in the middle of it!"

  Ilmar cracked a bony fist into his palm. "You mean that she set it into motion, only to find that it destroyed by atomic fission—and Pohyola is trapped inside because the Star Mill is still on itl"

  Kaleva nodded. "Her magic is sufficient to save the witch-worldlet, but not to free herself. Yet the Storm grows and grows. If the Sampo is not destroyed—"

  "It will devour the universe!" Ilmar shouted. "But if we know all this—why aren't we doing something about it? Instead of skulking down here in our educated mole-hole, why aren't we out telling the Ussi?"

  Kaleva took off his blue glasses and wiped his rheumy pale eyes. "Do you think they would believe us?"

  "Some of them might! We should try!"

  Kaleva shivered. His bowed shoulders seemed to be holding up a terrible burden. "From time to time we have sent our spies out into the Cities, to try and find at least one Ussi we could trust. You ought to know, Ilmar, since you were one of them! All of our hopes were negative. The Ussi would not believe us, only confuse and exploit our young people. No, Ilmar, in the end we put our trust where it was always intended. In the Flame Sword that Ilmarinen created to destroy the Sampo. And-"

  "And?" Ilmar demanded.

  Kaleva's gentle eyes held him in a net.

  "You, Ilmar."

  IX

  Ilmar's mind was a seething maelstrom. He had made so many futile grabs at memory, battering uselessly at those locked doors so long, that when the floodgates finally were opened by this gentle dying man it was like a nova exploding inside of his skull. The Star Mill did exist.

  The Black Storm was caused by its perversion to witch's evil.

  He—Ilmarinen's long-awaited time son—was destined to destroy this horror.

  He found Kaleva's eyes on him, sad, thoughtful. Ilmar got up fast, impelled by the storm within him. He prowled the circumference of the round room in great strides.

  "Won't the song-magic do it? Destroy the Sampo?"

  "No. It has too much of the Power within it. Only another Umarinen, wielding another Thing of all-power, can remove what the wondersmith created."

  Ilmar's hand flashed to the sword-brand on his face.

  "I—I triedl I already tried to get to Pohyola and destroy the Sampo!"

  "It was a rash mistake, Ilmar. An overwhelming impulse must have come over you when you were out in the Cities. A chance to stowaway in a Moonship and—"

  "Yes! After that into Deep. I stole a smaller ship and sent it hellbent into the heart of the Storm! I—" Ilmar snapped shut his eyes. The rag of memory was gone.

  "You encountered Louhi herself?"

  "I must have," Ilmar grimaced. "But I don't know what happened. If only I could remember!"

  "Never mind. We must be thankful that she could not kill you, that you somehow managed to get back out to that rock where you were picked up. Ukko was with you."

  Ilmar flung himself down in
the ivory seat. "What about the Flame Sword? Where does that come in?"

  The old man's eyes were closed. His faltering hands took hold of the long staff of rune-carved oak, his badge of leadership. His hps quivered under the swan-white beard. It was as if he prayed to the old gods for strength. For time ...

  Ilmar moved to touch his sleeve gently.

  The soft eyes opened.

  "That sword on your face is to tell us that our long wait is ended. It is to remind you of what Ilmarinen did, after. He was afraid, filled with remorse at what he had created. Even without knowing what Louhi had done, Ilmarinen realized what an evil Force he had unleashed; just as the Vanhat realize what their song-power is capable of in the wrong hands, Ilmarinen knew. He tried to find the Sampo. It was gone. So now Ilmarinen dedicated the rest of his life to creating a counter-force to destroy it. Hidden from the world, he sought every fragment of Otava metal which had long been used as amulets throughout the northlands. Then he secreted himself underground and went to work on the Flame Sword. And, so that this Sword could not be employed by anyone else for evil purposes, he sealed it up in such a way that only a son of his could draw it and wield it and its terrible powerl"

  Kaleva's fit of coughing sent him shuddering down on the couch. Ilmar sprang up to help him but the patriarch waved him away.

  "Nothing can be done," he choked out. "My time is long overdue. Koulema and the black swan hold no terrors for me." His words were strangled in his own blood that spewed out of his mouth onto his white beard.

  Ilmar grasped the mammoth's tusk arms of his chair in empathetic pain. He waited. Then he could not wait any longer. He must know! He must know before it was too late! Only Kaleva possessed all of the secretsl

  "Where is it?" he cried. "Where is the Flame Sword?"

  No answer. Kaleva lifted his skull-face and stared at Ilmar with eyes that seemed to be seeing beyond the chamber. With a convulsive motion he wrenched up on his feet. He swayed there like a wild spectre for a moment.

  "Ilmar!" he rasped out, with a final futile grab at life.

  "Find it-go—" His hand jerked the runic staff up and waved it. For a tick that stopped time the brandished staff seemed to point, then it dropped with a clatter.

  Kaleva's funeral was a simple ritual and it was accomplished with unshed tears. All of the Vanhat, old and young, gathered on the shores of the wide Under-earth lake. Old songs were chanted, and old prayers to ancient gods. Then, in grave silence, a small black barge moved out of the blue-gray mists that shrouded the far end of the lake and the unseen rook behind it. A muffled figure in gray dipped his pole into the black water to make a small sound as the barge moved out of the mist and slowly toward the waiting Vanhat.

  A long box of rowanwood, on which was draped the Vanhat flag—space-blue with a dipper of silver stars-was placed on the brief dock. The ferryman in the gray shroud brought the barge to the wooden pier and moored it. Ilmar's skin crawled when the tall cowled figure turned momentarily for a look that included all in the watching ring of faces. The face within the gray cowl was veiled heavily, so that no expression could be detected, yet the slow look seemed to express friendly foreboding. The ferryman moved then. He lifted the coffin easily to his shoulder and lowered it onto his barge.

  Silence. Deep silence. Then, again, the gentle thrusting sound of his pole into the black water. As the barge moved across the somber lake and into the mist, faintly, so very faintly that it might have come from a far-off star, Ilmar heard the black swan singing. Its farewell floated sweetly across the dark water, then dwindled gently away to tug one along with it, while the blue-gray mists took Kaleva and the barge and the strange ferryman into their keeping.

  The loss was sharp for them all. After nearly two hundred years, Kaleva seemed incapable of ever leaving them. Yet, the reaction to the loss of their leader expressed itself oddly: instead of numb panic, each of the Vanhat felt it his unspoken duty to work harder, to be kinder, to make up to each one of the others for his great loss. As otherwhere, when disaster strikes, individual problems were thrust out of sight

  Ilmar could not do this.

  Not quite.

  His problem was too all-consuming. Too vital.

  The gentle bondage which the Vanhat lived under, here in Underearth, was something he could not quite take. Kaleva, out of gentle understanding, his simple magnificence, his empathy for all men, had imprinted their minds with their silken bondage. Obscure to most, their duty was to have angelic patience until the time must come when they might move out into the sun and join the rest of the human race.

  Kaleva's philosophies were evident everywhere; his ideas were like crystal-clear mountain streams that flow out of the eternal snows into the muddy rivers inhabited by predatory fish, big ones devouring little.

  Kaleva's revelations had relieved his need to know, yes, but they had also inspired bigger questions—and the fierce need for action. They had waited for him to be born so that he might destroy the potential destroyer of everything. They looked to him, with their side-glances and silences, when he tried to be casually friendly or to ask what any of them knew about the Flame Sword. They knew nothing, but their attitude was one of confident respect. Ilmar would find a way. Kaleva had said it.

  What a legacy! What a thing to dump in his lap!

  At night, when he finally managed to find sleep, he began to have dreams. Dreams of his childhood. Of Nyyrikki...

  Ilmar was ten, Nyyrikki eleven. They had sneaked up to the entrance of the Rare Earth mines—the ancient mine-mouth which led to Lake Imari and the village. Other times they had only peeked out between the rotting boards, made purposely uninteresting and unimportant, for the rare cases when the Illusion machine that was taped with old songs and created the barrier between their valley and the Ussi, might fail temporarily. It had happened. The villagers took care of it in a naive bumbling way. The Ussi aircraft (it was invariably by air that the valley was spotted) would land because of some error or mechanical failure and the villagers would just "happen" to have parts of wrecked aircraft that would put them on their way.

  This time Nyyrikki had brought a gun, a rifle taken from the Museum. He'd cleaned and loaded it. Although there was no need for fresh meat, since the Vanhat grew most of their food in hydroponic tanks, Nyyrikki craved it and was bound to enjoy the thrill of stalking and killing. His description of how they would skin their prize and cook it over an open fire was irresistible. Ilmar had adventure in his bones, too.

  "But when Kaleva finds out!"

  "So what? Aino will lie for us." Nyyrikki guffawed. "For you she would do anything."

  "Kaleva always finds out," Ilmar said. "We will be punished."

  "Extra work?" Nyyrikki hooted. "Forbid us the night-sings for a week? This is worth it, Fire-Facel"

  From the mine-mouth Ilmar stared out widely at the open sky. It was so huge—so real. It made him dizzy to look up into it, as if he might fall upwards into all that nothing. He stared at the sun in frozen rapture until it burned dazzles on his brain.

  Nyyrikki's hand shook him from this ecstasy.

  "Hurry up, stupidl Some old biddy from the village will spot us in these clothes!"

  With a gulp, Ilmar tumbled after him into the woods. The sunspots still burned his eyes, but the pain itself was a joy. To see the sky and the pale winking stars of summer half-night. Ilmar's yearning outstripped Nyyrikki's. It sprang from his soul, not his belly.

  Their boys' game of being ancient hunters like in the old songs carried them through the fragrant pines and pungent cedars, across the rusted forest floor, at a gallop. The rich scents of humus and needles made Ilmar want to shout in delirious happiness. He touched the rough barks and chewed on needles. He was of it all, of the southwind soughing above them, of the swallows chattering in the lacy emerald glades. This was Tapiola. Magic Tapiola.

  A fat rodent nosed out of his hole. It waddled up on a rotted log for an unabashed look. Nyyrikki lifted the rifle to his shoulder. Ilmar yelled and bump
ed against his arm. The rifle cracked, shivering the trees around them.

  "They'll hear the shot, Nyyl These old guns made a heck of a noise!"

  Nyyrikki whirled savagely. "You made me miss, damn you! Now he's gone!"

  "Woodchucks are no good to eat."

  "How do you know?"

  "If you read your lessons once in a while—" "Shut up, Sword-Face!"

  They moved on in silence. Ilmar was so captivated by the sights and small sounds and the smells that he hardly noticed that Nyyrikki, stalking ahead, stopped short with a gasp for quiet. Ilmar blinked. In a pool of golden sunlight where motes danced, stood a deer. A magnificent buck with ten-point antlers. A forest godl Tapio himself I

  Nyyrikki drew a careful bead, but the animal stood there, head raised, proud, fearless. While Nyyrikki's aim wavered the stag dropped pose. Then he went back to the business of scraping winter shag from his antlers on a lightning-felled pine.

  The inviolable rule among the Vanhat was: Never kill for sport, only for food. To kill such a magnificent beast as this caught Ilmar's breath up. They couldn't eat it They couldn't give it to the Day's villagers. . . .

  Ilmar was back too far to do anything but shout "No!" but some extra-sensory warning clove his tongue to the roof of his mouth. By what he had done and was doing, Nyyrikki was trying to prove something. His worth to the Vanhat? His bravery?

  Behind them a small other sound snapped the hush.

  The stag faltered wonderingly. Then fell with a great crash.

  Nyyrikki whirled. "Ilmar! I didn't! I didn't do itl" "That's right, boy. I did."

  The voice behind them wore a chuckle of self-gratification. They turned in sudden panic. The words were Ussi! And as the man in hunter's clothes swaggered up, his fleshy face revealed a craving and delight in killing; it was there in his pinched pale eyes, in the curve of his flabby hps.