Mihajlo—“
“Nada!” he screamed.
She stopped. “Was I Nada?” she asked him, with puzzlement
upon her brow. After a while: “Yes, I think I was. And surely you were Mihajlo. . ..” She smiled. “Why, yes, you are. I brought you here to me, didn’t I, Mihajlo, darling?”
He shrieked, whirled, and ran. His men fled likewise, every which way into the dark. That made the horses stampede. When the noise had died, Nada the vilja stood alone. More stars had awakened. The last sunset glow was gone, but the west was yet pale. These different lights sheened off the lake, which cast them onto her until she was a slender curve and ripple of white, a glistening of tears. “Mihajlo,” she said. “Please.”
Then she forgot, laughed, and flitted into the forest.
The hunters won home separately but safe. What Sisko and Drazha had to tell made people warier than ever of the wild-wood. Mihajlo related no more than he must. Others soon marked that he was no longer the glad youth he had been. Much time did he spend with the chaplain at the castle, and later with his confessor in Shibenik. Next year he entered a monastery. His father the zhupan was less than happy about that.
Book One
Kraken
I
THE bishop of Viborg got Magnus Gregersen for his new arch-deacon. This man was more learned than most, having studied in Paris, and he was upright and pious; but folk called him too strict, and said they liked no better to see him coming, with his long lean frame and his long sour face, than they liked to see any other black crow in their fields. The bishop felt one like that was needed, for laxity had set in during the years of strife that harried Denmark after King Valdemar the Victorious died.
Riding along the eastern Jutish coast as episcopal provost, Magnus came to Als, not the island but a hamlet of the same name. It was poor and lonely, deep woods behind it and Kon-gerslev Marsh to the north. Only two roads served it, one on the strand and one twisting southwesterly toward Hadsund. Each Sep-tember and October its fishermen would join the hundreds that made catches in the Sound during the great herring run; otherwise their kind saw little of the outside world. They dragged their nets through the water and farmed their thin-soiled acres until time and toil broke them and they laid their bones to rest behind the small wooden church. Many old ways were still followed in steads like this. Magnus thought such doings pagan and bewailed to himself that there was no ready way to stop them.
Thus a baffled zeal grew double strong in him when he heard certain rumors about Als. None there would own to knowledge of what might have been happening since that day fourteen years ago when Agnete carne back out of the sea. Magnus got the priest alone and sternly demanded the truth. Father Knud was a gentle man, born in one of those tiny houses, who had long turned a blind eye on what he thought were minor sins that gave his flock some cheer in their bleak lives. But he was aged now, and feeble, and Magnus soon wrung from him the full tale.
The provost returned to Viborg with a holy flame in his gau.
He went to the bishop and said: “My lord, in making my rounds
through your diocese I found woefully many signs of the Devil’s
work. But I had not looked to come upon himself~no, say rather
a whole nest of his foulest, most dangerous fiends. Yet this I did
in the strand-hamlet Als.” ,
“What mean you?” asked the bishop sharply; for he also dreaded a return of the old witchy gods.
“I mean that offshore is a town of merfolk!”
The bishop eased. “How interesting,” he said. “I knew not that
any were left in Danish waters. They are not devils, my good Magnus. They lack souls, yes, like other beasts. But they do not imperil salvation as might the dwellers in an elfhill. Indeed, they seldom have aught to do with the tribe of Adam.”