The Star Mill Read online

  They could only stare in wonder. They had never seen an Ussi.

  "Your gun makes hardly any sound," Nyyrikki blurted. "Sure drops them though, eh?" The hunter grinned. "Finds the target every time." "Then why—" Ilmar stopped short, biting his hp.

  Nyyrikki caught his glance. Where was the sport of it if the bullet never missed? But the hunter wasn't paying attention to them now. He was examining his kill, smiling. The stag's eyes were glazing over, dull and unseeing as his blood warmed the new shoots of green, the crocuses.

  The stranger put a proprietary foot on his prize and started bragging about his other kills, not only on Mars and Venus, but in Deep. "The man-like primitives are best. They give you a real fight."

  "How did you get here into our valley?" Ilmar asked.

  "Damn little hunting here on Terra, but I was told that bear and deer had been sighted up here in the Lake Imari district. I was warned about the storms, but hell. And just where did you come from? I didn't see you down in the village. What's those clothes you're wearing?"

  Kaleva's law was: Ussi must never know.

  "We are from the village," Ilmar said.

  "Helll In these synthetics? The villagers fixing my plane talk like inbred morons. Haven't got the brains to go south into the Cities." He lifted his strange rifle-size weapon. "I've heard some funny stuff about this lake region. Another man whose plane crashed up here in a storm' like I did—he said some wild things. Sent a patrol up here to investigate, but they couldn't locate the valley."

  Ilmar's mind raced. What to do? They weren't supposed to be up on the surface at all. Now this Ussi, this rich hunter. But Nyyrikki moved first.

  He fell on his knees, groveling. "Don't ldll us! Well tell you who we are. We'll take you to our underground city!"

  The hunter's eyes went wide and the gun sagged. "Nyyrikki!" Ilmar yelled. "What are you do—" Nyyrikki whirled on him. "Shut! Can't you see the

  great hunter has us where he wants us? His gun can't miss, stupidl"

  But when the strange weapon the hunter's pudgy hands gripped dropped to his side, Nyyrikki moved like summer hghtning. His rifle swung up and crackled fire. The Ussi hunter wore a hole in his forehead that didn't belong, and a surprised look, as he toppled across the dead stag.

  Ilmar bolted up from his childhood dream. This was memory flooding back, sharp, cogent, important. His first brush with an Ussi and, unhappily, a poor specimen. His poignant memory of friendship with Nyyrikki. This one episode was branded more deeply on his mind than all of the others.

  He smiled grimly, remembering the follow-up.

  Kaleva was glacial; sterner than at any other time Ilmar had seen him. Nyyrikki had created a crisis which had forced him to transgress a vital Vanhat law. He had killed. And Ilmar was party to the crime. Kaleva's blue eyes burned into Ilmar's brain.

  "You are more to blame than Nyyrikki!''

  "Me!"

  "Yes. You know what is right While Nyyrikki . . ." The ancient sighed deep. "You are old enough to know his secret."

  "Secret!"

  "Remember the old songs of Kullervo?"

  "He was forced to wander the cold wastes forever, because of a terrible sin he committed. There was an evil seed in his blood. He—" Ilmar stopped with a breath-held gulp.

  Kaleva nodded somberly. "Yes, Ilmar. Kullervo's fate was bitter. And Nyyrikki bears the taint. This is the thing he must battle for the whole of his rash life; this is the thing which inspires his wildness. When you two go out into the Ussi world in secret, it must be you who leads; you, Ilmar. You must keep faith when Nyyrikki's evil seed becomes too strong for him."

  The lesson was clean-cut. Ilmar must help Nyyrikld, bend him to wiser paths when the wildness took hold of him. Ilmar should be wary when Nyyrildd went too far. Ilmar must teach Nyyrikki, guide him.

  Yet, in the end, it was Nyyrikki who taught Ilmar.

  Taught him how a man dies.

  X

  Each day that passed was a frustration. Lost time. Self torment. Kaleva had put a burden on Ilmar, or rather reinforced the burden Ilmar saw written on his face every time he trimmed his colorful beard. Even to glance into a mirror or to pass by a curve of polished steel was agony.

  He prowled the deepest caves like an animal. He must find the Flame Sword. And the Gate. But—where? Where?

  He couldn't eat or sleep. He gave up trimming his beard and shunned reflecting metals like a vampire. When sleep did come to him it brought dreams of the Witch on the high crag, cackling and mocking him, daring him to try again.

  "llmarinen couldn't defeat me, so how can his spawn? But come to Pohyolal Try! My demon dogs are hungry!"

  Lokka found him haggardly wandering the halls, mumbling to himself. She led him to her rooms, where she forced him to eat.

  "I can't, Mother!"

  "Drink, then. It will give you strength. You must put meat back on those bones if you are to replace Kaleva and be our new leader."

  "Leader!" Ilmar jammed his finger at the fire-mark on his cheek. "With this! You know I can't rest until this brand is gone. And you know what will make it be gone!"

  "Listen, Ilmar. I have prepared a cosmetic paste. I learned it from reading Ussi books. It's really wonderful. It will cover anything and practically becomes a part of your skin. Here! Look! Let me put just a little on—"

  Ilmar glowered down at the jar. His impulse to send it skittering across the chamber dwindled at the beseeching look in her eyes.

  "I know what you're trying to do, Mother. But it's no use." His head fell to his arms, on the table. He shuddered from exhaustion.

  He felt Lokka's work-worn hands tremble across his coppery head. "Ilmar, we must have a Leader. You are the one. If you should leave and never come back—what shall we do?"

  Ilmar sighed, pulling himself up. "I want to, Mother-but how can I? If I neglected my task I would not be worthy to lead the Vanhat. How can you ask?"

  "I can," Lokka said. "I can ask it. So can Aino."

  Something in her voice stiffened his muscles; he whirled sharply. "You're not holding something back from me, Mother. Something I should know?"

  She shook her head, avoided his look.

  "You're sure Kaleva didn't tell you something, in case he died very suddenly—"

  "No. He told me nothing."

  Ilmar stood up quickly. He moved and took hold of Lokka's bony shoulders, firmly, gendy. He looked deep in her eyes. "It's Aino, isn't it."

  "I don't know, my son. But I—I believe that Kaleva would not want a mother to be the one who sent her own son to die."

  Aino was spy-trained. She had learned the art of wide-eyed duplicity, a rare thing among the Vanhat. She used it now. When Ilmar shook her by the shoulders and demanded what she knew, her innocence was worthy of Pohyola's daughter herself.

  "I don't know a thing, rdkas. Not a thing. How should Kaleva tell me? He knows that I love you more than my life."

  Ilmar swore through tight lips. "I am not at all convinced. You're the logical one for him to tell." He kissed her savagely, then pushed her back. "One more time, Aino. If you he to me now, you know that I can never respect you again." He waited, while Aino crushed herself against him, sobbing.

  "I—don't—know—anything."

  Ilmar brushed away from her. "Don't you care about all the people who have been killed? The billions who will be? Nyyrikki ..."

  Aino's eyes flashed. "I only care about us, Ilmar. You tried once. Whatever happens—it's a slow thing. The Storm feeds slowly. It's so far away. In our lifetime—"

  Ilmar tossed her a grim look and started out of her room.

  "WaitI" she sobbed, harshly. He froze, turned.

  "Kaleva didn't tell me anything, not really. But once, when he heard that you were to be killed by the Ussi and his heart collapsed, he said one thing to me. It doesn't mean much."

  "What did he say?" Ilmar demanded.

  "He said: If I die and if Jumala spares Ilmar, tell him that the Sword is where it is and the Gate is beh
ind it."

  Ilmar took Aino in his arms and kissed her. But it was not until his steps led him without conscious direction toward Kaleva's round sanctum and his fingers closed around the handle to open the door that he knew. The tapestried chamber had been left closed, like a shrine, in the weeks since Kaleva had died. It was for the new Leader of the Vanhat to reopen it. Ilmar had turned his back on leadership, out of guiltful need for action. His task came first. The stigmata on his face must be erased.

  He moved purposefully across the thin patina of dust, past the couch with Kaleva's runic staff on it. Now he knew. He knew exactly what Kaleva had tried to do, with his last remaining shred of life. He had flailed out his staff, kinetically the staff itself had whipped up in his feeble grasp—and pointed.

  At the tapestry of Ilmarinen, the Wondersmith.

  Ilmarinen drawing out the Flame Sword.

  The Sword is where the Sword is.

  When he reached the silk-and-gold cloth, the enormous Ilmarinen of the copper beard and determined eyes, Ilmar stopped. He looked up at his ancestor, his father by some curious Time-fold. In the uncertain fight the giant figure seemed on the very point of moving. Of actually drawing the Sword out of the cauldron the rest of the way.

  In the breathless silence, the Wondersmith seemed on the hairpoint of speech.

  "Take the Sword," the looming giant told him. "It fits your hand. No one else's. Your blood is in it."

  Ilmar moved a step closer. Another. Now the warp and woof of the skillfully loomed cloth was close enough for him to reach out and touch. The tapestry texture felt coarse to his roving fingers, from the copper and brass and gold threads that had been woven into it; from the reeds and grasses; from the strange red and blue dyes, like blood, like mineral clay.

  "I can't reach it." Ilmar grinned up at the woven giant "Try. Try with all of your mind."

  Ilmar shrugged. He crabbed his fingers up the rough fabric. Up. Up. He strained his hand toward the Sword's hilt. When the uselessness of attempting to reach a ten-foot sword down from ten yards over his head struck him, the Sword seemed to retreat. When he gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, saw it dwindle and move downward in his mind—it did.

  "Ouchl"

  The flame scorched his hand before his fist gripped the hilt Ihnarinen handed him. Touching the blue-fire sapphire set in the hilt sent a thrill of new blood spinning through him, through every capillary, every minor nerve. It was like touching Ilmarinen's soul.

  "Put it in your belt," the Wondersmith's voice whispered out of Time.

  "I have no sheath."

  "Try. Perkele, boy! It took me ten years of my last heart's blood to fashion it! Take it!"

  Ilmar curved his fingers around the hilt. It was like grasping Ilmarinen's own steel-tough hand. He lowered the Flame Sword to his wide belt doubtfully. But the Sword knew it belonged there. It whipped around him three times, like a thing alive, concealing itself in his thick leather belt. By turns it was short, then long. When it found its home the tip of it dug through Ilmar's forest-green tunic and found his spine. It pinpricked in his flesh and remained there.

  Ilmar winced, but wonder was uppermost. He looked up at Ihnarinen. The Wondersmith seemed to smile now.

  "The Gate?" Ilmar asked.

  "Behind this rag, of course!" A freezing wind out of space itself billowed the tapestry. "Ukko! Do I have to tell you everything?"

  Past Three

  THE STAR MILL

  "Ukko, thou of gods the highest, Give me here a Sword of Fire, By a sheath of fire protected, That I may resist misfortune, And I may avoid destruction, Overcome the powers of evil..

  Ka levala: Runo X

  What the gate was on the other side was blurred by eternal mystery, but on this side the gate was made out of wood and it sagged rather badly. The high pickets had been painted blue but most of the color was gone now so that mostly weathered gray wood showed on the log posts, the gate itself, and the length of the long sloped fence on both sides of it.

  Ilmar replaced the oval of heavy wire carefully on the pickets after creaking it shut behind him. He stared back where he had come from, but it wasn't as it had been. Now it was deep green forest He turned.

  Across a wide meadow a cock crowed.

  Ilmar shaded his eyes along the down-sweep of harvested rye stubble to the red bams and stables of the farmyard; he pushed his wondering look further, where, within the rear courtyard the land rose again, leading across hand-pump and kitchens to the dark castle itself. He gaped, listening to the sounds of the farm's awakening; the soft hungry lowing of bullocks, the bleat of newly weaned lambs, the squealing grunt of hogs as the slop-mash sloshed into their troughs. Predawn on a castle farm.

  Ihnar's eyes carried him up into the foggy sky, while the leap of wonder at all of this strangely prosaic magic flung itself through his lanky frame. Overhead a hawk moved in lopsided circles against the gray-black smear; he, too, was searching out his breakfast in the wide meadow's bowl.

  Stared out, Ilmar sat himself down on a big boulder to try and assimilate all about him, to place himself into it, to orient himself. The boulder was smooth on top. A thousand times Louhi's farm slaves had stolen a moment of rest on it, snatching a breather from humdrum drudgery. Beyond the picket fence, where he ought to have come from, was a charred spot, remnant of a thousand nightly fire-sings. Barren places in the sward and gathered rocks and bits of log from the forest encircled the dead fire. The forest back of the fire-sing-place lifted shaggy and dense with pine and fir and spruce. Still further, where the forest lifted onto high ground, a rocky cliff reared up into the mists.

  Ilmar drank in the autumn tang, the waking hunger of the farm, the hawk's piercing invocation, the witch castle looming under alien suns; he was dizzy and unsure of himself. It would have been well to have brought some land of weapon of Ussi manufacture. Yet, would such a weapon work against star-demons?

  He blinked up at the tower. There was a small slash of window where the dark mist began to thicken into the consistency and color of diseased liver. Straining his eyes, he thought he detected a nicker of movement. A corbie or crow, perhaps?

  Until this morning his only concern had been to get here with the Flame Sword. But now that he was here on Louhi's peripatetic worldlet, what next? Sorcery and cunning were the Witch's watchwords. Louhi's evil nature was so strong that it soaked up all of the other evil in the universe like a sponge, and had done so for thousands of years. Her pacts with alien creatures who were inimical to man had given her immense power.

  Ilmar had no such powers and even Ukko shunned this plague spot in the galaxy. True, he had Ilmarinen's Sword—but that had been designed for one purpose only. To destroy the Sampo. There was nothing to prevent Louhi from destroying him before he could reach it, or even locate it. She would naturally have hidden the Star Mill in some secret spot, well protected by daemonaic device. What to do?

  A sigh and a wild roving glance gave him a shred of an idea. The Gatel On this side it was a typical farm gate designed to keep farm animals in and forest beasts out. So. Ilmar must assume a role. He would be an early hunter returned empty-handed; somehow he would conceal himself among Louhi's army of slaves. The Gate had been contrived to this endl

  "Paiva."

  The civil greeting came from behind a hummock across the narrow barnyard path. Ilmar turned with a start. His eyes went wide to see a bush of green-brown hair moving above the barley stalks. Then a pair of enormous round eyes like animate emeralds.

  "Paiva, elf," Ilmar returned.

  There was a high titter, and the barley stalks whisked aside. Ilmar found himself staring at an oversize alien head, round, greenish in color, smallmouthed, but with a pair of large fluted ears that oscillated and swiveled in bewildering fashion. It appeared that the small alien's globular head appendages were in constant undulating movement, more so when he was excited, and that functionally and organically they were far more than just ears.

  "I'm not an elf, cousin!"

 
; Ilmar grinned. The creature could not have measured more than two foot six, from the tips of his upturned brown leather sandals with the bells on the toes, to that verdant plethora of grasshopper-spit hair. In fact, there was something of a grasshopper about the folded manner in which his spindly arms and legs were attached to his pear-shaped torso. He wore a bright yellow suit of silk, with a wide scalloped collar around his stick of a neck, and there were bells dangling from the points of his collar and his elbows as well.

  "For that matter," Ilmar said good-naturedly, "I'm not your cousin, elf 1"

  The gooseberry eyes protruded in surprise.

  "You've got to bel"

  "Be what?" Ilmar forced himself not to laugh. The little alien's forehead was suddenly rutted by a ludicrous, painful frown. There was something ingenuously appealing about him; Ilmar warmed to him as to one of Tapio's small furry creatures out of the wood.

  "Karina's cousin, Toivo from over the mountain, of course!"

  "Must I?"

  "Who else could you be?" The little one waved his arms in desperation, setting the bells to jingling.

  Ilmar shrugged and stood up. "Well, if I must, I must. By the way, who are you?"

  A pleased titter, then the alien held his breath before he said, "Kokokokokokokokokokoko."

  Ilmar smiled and nodded. "Niin. I understand. You are called that because you are the one who 'gathers up all the firewood and stacks it in a pile by the fire.' "

  The ears flapped wildly. "The Mistress named me so because one of my duties is to tend her fireplace up in the Tower. I do lots of other things for her, too. I run and fetch things. I bring the sweet cakes every mom—"

  "Never mind the rundown. I'll just call you Koko. Okay?"

  Koko hopped back and forth in great glee. From the get-up, Ilmar decided that the Mistress of Pohyola kept the little alien around her mainly as her court jester.

  "Let's go find Karina,. Cousin Toivo. She will give us a caraway cake and a pitcher of fresh milk." His sevenfingered hand crept confidently into Ilmar's and tugged him down the cowpath.