The Saga of Lost Earths Read online

  The first one gave her waist-long dark hair a laughing toss with her pale arms; her cranberry red lips pouted a preliminary kiss. Now Lemminkainen ran, dry-throated. Now his powerful arms went out to take her.

  His arms closed around air.

  The maidens vanished, and, from high, high up on the cliff fortress came a hideous mocking cackle.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XII

  LEMMINKAINEN had only time to wrench his eyes from the moss ledge and squint upwards into the dark mists. In that instant the copper-mesh net dropped over him.

  Ignominy and blind rage burst out of him in hoarsely shouted curses and imprecations while the second rope to which Old Louhi's copper seine was attached yanked him off his feet as it whipped shut the bottom. The hero's great body of bulging muscles bumped against the black rock and alternately swung out lakeward, under his thrashing and floundering. His hands were pinned over his head, so that he could not reach his silver sword. He was bunched into a metal sack created by that wily witch, the Mistress of Pohyola. After having been tricked by the most threadbare of illusions!

  Like Iron itself, Copper was likewise recalcitrant and uneasy under its human domination. This Copper had been witch-sung into a spider's web that detested heroes; it clung to Lemminkainen's straining arms and bit into him, while the winch far above turned to drag him upward into Louhi's toils.

  A curious hawk swooped in for a look.

  “Where go you, Lemminkainen?"

  “To Pohyola, as was my plan."

  “Ai! but not the way you planned! Kauko, the great hero, trussed up like a boar for slaughter. A plaything for Witch Louhi's demon cousins!"

  “Off to your nest, Old One!” Lemminkainen snapped. “I have no ladder to help me up this black wall. No wings like yours to bear me up. Let it be the witch herself who pulls me up."

  “So you say. But take counsel: ‘ware the snakes! ‘ware the Midsummer's demon-feast! ‘Ware the Hag of the Rock most of all!"

  So saying, the hawk swooped down to seek a fat rodent for his supper.

  Dragged over the beetling cliff-lip onto icy headland, Lemminkainen fought Copper to raise for a look around him in the swirling purple mist. If Louhi had been here before, she was not now; his angry eyes saw only the muffled statue of a lookout beyond the stone anchored winch, holding his giant thunderhorn belled out against the rock between his thonged leggings. A pole was thrust through loops deftly hitched into the two ropes that had borne him upcliff, by two swarthy, short-legged creatures whose brutish faces were framed by black cowls; the pole-ends were grunted up on their massive shoulders and away they went down the path between the rocks, toward Old Louhi's castle.

  Lightning tore across the island in the sky. Ukko sent wild thunder spilling out across this outrage in time and matter. Once, during a spasm of furious squirmings to escape, Lemminkainen saw the witch's shadow on a knoll, for only an instant while the forked lightning blasted the churning mass of black clouds banked beyond the ramparts of her farm-surrounded castle. Crookbacked, ancient, hideous. And once again that mocking cackle.

  Now Lemminkainen decided to play possum. His struggles had exhausted him completely. He lay docile as a kitten while the two warriors carried him through the gate and around the great stone block of Louhi's Castle to the edge of a field of barley, to the stables beyond the captive slaves’ quarters, the cow and bullock stables.

  When they dropped him heavily on a pile of seasoned dung, he didn't even grunt. Only after they had yanked the copper net off him and flopped him over on his back did the hero move, and fast.

  He sprang to his feet with drawn blade, and an involuntary battle cry burst from his throat. Before the gaping duo of kill-trained warrior guards could quite recover what little wits they had, Ilmar's silver sword slashed them down; their blood warmed the barnyard filth.

  Lemminkainen's cry brought others, black, misshapen hulks with broadswords, maces and hayforks. His back to the weathered cow stable, Lemminkainen fought them, smiling to do so after his ignominious session in the copper mesh. His sword rang and sang while it split skulls and lopped off springing arms. More black-hooded creatures ran up in a tide from all corners of the yard when a great bell clanged.

  What Ilmar's sword struck, died. But there were too many, a veritable river. A side-tossed boulder smashed Lemminkainen's cheek; he tottered, off guard, sword brushing the ground.

  They were on him like grimy bees.

  He fell backward, shouting defiant fury.

  Lemminkainen awoke shivering convulsively. It was freezing cold on the pile of urine-soaked straw where he lay. Underneath was no floor, but hard-packed dirt. The enclosure was pitch dark, but a lowing complaint and a heavy hoofthumping from the stall next to him on either side, close, told him where he was. In the stable, in one of the narrow stalls, among the bullock and kine, shivering with cold ague and wincing from the pungent odor of dung.

  Gall boiled up in his throat; he rose dizzily, groping his way up the rough adzed planks.

  Teeth chattering like metsola magpies, he had gained his feet but shakily when a snarling explosion of amusement from between the stalls made him crack his neck in that direction. The garbled light of the oil lantern he carried dimly illuminated the wide ugly face, the filthy wool pants and homespun once-blue blouse of the stablemaster.

  “Ail. You have slept too long already, cow-dung! Already it is near sunup. Here are your tools to clean up this barn and all the others."

  Lemminkainen's hand flashed for a sword, grasped nothing. “I am Lemminkainen!” he cried. “I am no stablekeep!"

  “Silence, offal!"

  A fist like a pig-haunch slashed out; Lemminkainen found himself jolted back on the dung and straw. The hulking figure of the stablemaster hung over him with a pitchfork.

  “I am your master, dung-hero. As Louhi is my mistress. If I come back to find any stable less than a bride's shift I shall beat you within one inch of Tuonela."

  Words of hot passion quivered on his frozen lips, but Lemminkainen held them back. The sharp tines of the pitch were eager for his blood and near to having it. He closed his eyes, not to see that beast's face spit on him, laughing. He kept them shut until the sound of the keeper's heavy boots dwindled away between the stalls and the barn door slammed.

  He knew Louhi's sadistic ways. One keeper was a match for the witch, herself, chosen to soften up her captive slaves into accepting their dreaded lot in this outworld island where time and sanity had no meaning. Blasphemous sorcery alone kept Pohyola drifting between the planets and the eons; fed and nurtured by the outworld creatures Louhi catered to and served, in turn.

  The hero's heart shriveled up in his great chest. The Mistress of Pohyola had old scores to settle with the three suomi heroes; killing Lemminkainen, whether by freezing, starving, overwork, or by some subtle magic means, would rid her of one.

  Washing himself at the handpump in the courtyard outside the regular slaves’ sleeping quarters, Lemminkainen felt a soft hand touch his shoulder. He straightened up from the ice edged water trough.

  “My name is Aiile,” the girl said, smiling shyly. “I have heard many songs of Lemminkainen. I work in the kitchens; I saw you from the scullery window. Here is a cloth to dry yourself. And a cake of black bread.” Her eyes dreamed up into his now smiling face; she sighed. “If I can ever do more-"

  “You are kind, Aiile.” While he mopped the icy wet from his face and neck his blue eyes roved over her pretty peasant face, her servant girl's dress. “Don't the stable keeps get fed, along with the other animals?"

  Aiile nodded, wincing.

  “After your morning tasks you will be given crusts of black bread and lightning-soured milk. In the evening barley mush and a mug of beer. If you do your work well. If not...” Her thin face glowed worry. “Torvo will use you ill because you are a hero and an enemy of the Mistress. Whenever I can, I will steal you extra food from the kitchen. A hero needs-"

  “Aide!"

  The screa
m from the kitchen door rose to warning pitch.

  “I must go or she will beat me."

  “First, tell me if Old Louhi has recently stolen a girl who-?"

  Aiile nodded fearfully, pulling away from him. “See you at the night fire!” she called back, and fled uphill toward the castle kitchens.

  Days lagged meanly by; Lemminkainen grew lean from the gruel and occasional fish heads which the farm slaves were flung after the swine had been slopped. Hard work strengthened his sinews, nevertheless, and his burning resolve to find and free Kyllikki, as well as to avenge his own humiliation. At the end of the wide meadow behind the swine pens and barns, where forest shagged the hills, the slaves had their nightsongs around a leaping fire. This was festival time and for the servants even such a one as Torvo relaxed his iron rules.

  Lemminkainen carved himself a kantele from laurelwood and fishbones; the captives gathered eagerly at the cusp of each summer's night to listen to him strum the fox-gat strings and sing his songs of heroic deeds and passion. The young girls cast him shy glances. Lemminkainen looked among them for Aiile in vain. Apparently the great hulking ruler of household servants, well-named Mairikki (the Cow), had seen Aiile talking to him at the well and was seeing to it that there would be no more of that.

  One night he lingered alone at the forest's edge, while the others moved off through feathery silver-tipped barley; he stared down at the few remaining coals of the sing-fire. Stars fingered their way out of the cloudwrack while he sang, softly:

  “Kyllikki, my dearest heart-core,

  Thou my sweetest little berry,

  Let my eyes caress thy beauty,

  Let my arms possess thy splendor."

  A raw cackling cleaved his reverie. Lemminkainen whirled. Behind him on a hillock of stones, stood Witch Louhi, holding her twisted middle and rocking with laughter. Behind her stood the ugly black castle; her snake stick caressed her splayed feet; her eyes shone evilly, out of caverns so black and deep they seemed to be no part of her hideous crooked body, and those long skeleton fingers. Over her ancient shoulders she wore a vivid green cloak that flapped to a gnawing wind; her medusa hair was allowed to whip about her sunken dark face at will.

  “Sing more, Lemminkainen!” she screeched. “Even the besalintut are jealous of young Kauko's magic throat!"

  Lemminkainen put down his kantele. He faced her without flinching, as few men could.

  “I am no longer inspired,” he told her.

  Louhi spat and rumbled curses. Somewhere behind all that horror was a woman.

  “Where is Kyllikki?” he demanded.

  The Hag laughed; her snake stick hissed and showed a forked tongue. “Kyllikki is dead!"

  “Dead!” His heart stopped beating. “Don't you remember? Long ago you took her by force on your sledge. Childishly fearful, Killikki drowned herself in the river and became a pike, rather than live away from her own hearth."

  “No!” Lemminkainen refuted. But his head roiled with sudden doubt. Some part of this was true, and yet ... “Silia.” The name spilled out from a sibling mind. “Yes! Silia!"

  “Yes, indeed, Silia,” Louhi cackled her content in harassing her ancient enemy. “One whom I know and serve sighted the wench with you on the tundras to the south. He wants her; so, to do him this favor, and to square accounts with you, I stole her. It was easy,” she taunted. “Your mind is split in two pieces and this green-eyed uusi knows less than she thinks."

  Lemminkainen scowled, while his mind tottered on the brink of knowledge unborn or forgotten.

  “He may have the girl. But first she must be taught to be dutiful and bend to the whims of my friend. I have made her a kitchen drudge; for the moment her duties are to scrub kettles and carry the bedroom slops. She is permitted to sleep in the ashes to keep warm. Ai! You would not recognize your Silia, she is so covered with soot!"

  Lemminkainen's sinewy body shivered; his hands itched to be around her throat. But Louhi's magic was strong; he must use every craft, be even more wily than she.

  “Who,” he asked, dry-mouthed, “is this friend who desires my Silia?"

  “Keitolainen."

  She said it with great relish, rolling the fearful name out very slowly.

  Lemminkainen trembled. Keitolainen. Right hand of Hiisi. Keitolainen, called The Contemptible.

  “Would you like to see her for the last time?” Louhi mocked.

  Lemminkainen could only nod.

  “Then you shall. Your agony will amuse me. Tomorrow at the great Midsummer's feast. All of my dear friends will be there, all the way from Pakkanen and the darkest stars. My guests will enjoy the irony of your love songs, when you sing them as part of the entertainment, knowing well what is to follow when Keitolainen takes Silia back with him beyond the great black gulf."

  In an eyeblink the hideous crone vanished. He was alone in the dusk with the droning clouds of mosquitoes and the dirge-plaints of nighthawks over the soughing trees.

  Pohhl's great feast hall was decorated with laurel and on every rafter hung gay red lingonberries. The assembled guests sat behind the long well-laden table, on one side only, so that the jugglers and dancers and singers could be well seen in the center of the floor, under the bright rings of five hundred starry tapers. The great platters on the table were heaped with char-roasted pork, with elk and deer, with salmon and pike, with mushrooms from the deepest forests, with cherries and strawberries, cranberries from the bogs, great rounds of unleavened rye bread and potatoes in milk gravy. There were huge round wooden buckets of ale and beer, with mead for the Norsemen.

  Louhi sat on a great throne of oak, carved with dragons and star-demons.

  In a small cell off the great kitchen larders, Lemminkainen was told to strip off his barnyard rags and sauna, lest he offend the witch's guests with his dung-stench. Mairikki flung him a rough towel and bellowed at him to be quick, the feast was already under way. Behind him came a thin slave girl with a yoke around her neck, from which hung on either side great buckets of icy water from the well. Her burden bent her lath-thin body and her head, so that it was only when Lemminkainen hastened to unhook the great oak buckets from her neck yoke, that he saw that it was Aiile. The tyrannical Mairikki was too preoccupied with her feast chores to notice.

  Aiile's wood-violet eyes shot the tall hero a look of shy love while the door slammed shut behind the household tyrant. Lemminkainen took hold of her work-bent shoulders.

  “Damn the witch!” he muttered. “Why don't you slaves rebel? There are more of you than warriors"

  The yellow fire under the sauna rocks leaped into the girl's eyes; Lemminkainen saw hope trembling there.

  “We cannot fight her magic!"

  “Her strength is that you believe Louhi's magic is limitless. She is a mortal, like all of you!"

  Aiile shivered. “There are those among us who would fight, had they a leader. They have even concealed hand weapons.” She looked up at him desperately. “If only you—” Lemminkainen gripped her tightly.

  “Tell them not to wait any longer! Tonight! But,"—he gave his blonde head a savage shake—"I have need of a weapon. The silver sword Ilmarinen sang for me. If I had that I-"

  Some of his fierceness flowed into the slave girl, through her humble love. “It ... it is possible. Midsummer's night there is much drinking, among the Mistress's warriors, as well as her guests."

  “Perkele! That is it, my little wood dove! Spread the word among the servants to see that all of the guards get double rations of ale and beer. Tell the men to watch for my signal. It will be the moment you hand me my sword, which you will have stolen out of the arms room after its drunken guards have had their heads bashed in!"

  Aiile trembled against his wide chest.

  “Can we do it? Tell us we can I"

  “You can! Lemminkainen tells you that you must believe, you must stifle your terror of Louhi's magic, and believe only him!"

  “I will tell them.” Aiile nodded, tight-faced. “I will explain that you hav
e ordered them to revolt and to succeed."

  Lemminkainen grinned wide and kissed her. Washing himself, after the door closed behind Aiile and the resolution shining in her face, Lemminkainen told the glowing rocks, the pine walls, the stars: That is the difference between heroes and slaves. Total belief. Implacable purpose.

  Clothed in minstrel finery, he waited in the arrassed alcove behind stone pillars, while jugglers and acrobats performed for Louhi and her strange guests. He pushed through to the tapestry's edge; from here he could see the scarlet clad witch on her central throne, watching her demon revelers wallow in food and drink, while betimes lesser minstrels than Lemminkainen made up songs in praise of Louhi and each guest, in turn, as was the custom. He made a scornful sound deep in his throat at such fawning. He would be shredded under the hooves of the Black Oxen of Vammatar before he-

  He pinched his eyes to see Keitolainen the Contemptible, the horror to whom Silia had been promised. Sweeping his look along the platters and trenchers and pinecone decorations, he admonished his starved stomach to stop gurgling at the sight of all that food, and hunt Hiisi's right hand.

  Yes.

  The Dark One at the end. The others wore colorful trappings and were practically human. Keitolainen the Contemptible was only a mind-painting blotch of nothing.

  A hole in space.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XIII

  LEMMINKAINEN stood before Louhi and her outworld guests in his leather breeches and loose-sleeved green blouse, his high-laced boots wide apart, his faint smile contemptuous of them all. Finally the crone deigned to take notice of him and his kantele.

  “Nahda!” she screamed over the tumult, as of hogs wallowing noisily in a slop trough. “See what I bring you for a final entertainment Lemminkainen, favored son of Ilmatar! Many times have I cast my copper net over the crag, but never have I caught such a handsome fish!” She brandished her snake stick drunkenly, cackling. “Sing, hero! We have heard that Kauko's songs can charm the cuckoo from its nest and the World-Weaver from her rainbow beyond the Great Bear. Sing now, and well! Or I will have the tongue seared out of your head with your own sword!"