Celtika by Robert Holdstock Read Free Book Online Page A

but you need a guide. I can help you to find one. But only if you want to.’
    And she turned and stalked away, leaving me wondering where, among the camps that ringed the lake, I would find a full beast’s-worth of entrails to feed to the sinister lake guardian.
    *   *   *
    The best way to move across the lake, I discovered over the next few days, was on bone-blades shaped from the shoulders of reindeer. These had been carefully carved by a local man, who earned a good living at it, and he skilfully attached them to whatever footwear might be needed. A push and a shove and even the most ungainly of ageing shamans could begin to move across the frozen surface. By bending forward and holding hands behind the back, the movement was swifter and more control could be maintained. I practised for a while, turning in elaborate circles and speeding around the edge of the lake, staying clear of the territorial markings of the various encampments, weaving between other visitors who seemed to be using this astonishing means of movement more for entertainment than serious business.
    Niiv floated out towards me. She was Pohjolan and skilled in ice dancing. She led me deeper, to where several shamans, all of them greased and naked except for their bone-bladed shoes, danced in a complex pattern around one part of the surface, trying to summon the power to carve a huge hole in the ice, she said. They skidded and slipped, bony white bodies in the torchlit night, cascading streams of ice marking each abrupt end to an elaborate dance of enchantment.
    Even the dogs wore blades on their paws, huge white hounds howling wildly as their masters threw antlers for them to chase.
    All of this was happening at the edge of the lake. The centre was guarded by ice statues, ten in all, a circle of gigantic, frosted figures (‘cold-night’ sedja, Niiv whispered, winter talismans) that stared towards the encircling forest through melting features. Inside this wide and protected circle was where the real activity was occurring. Here, holes to the water below had been carved, scraped, boiled and burned, but they closed up as fast as they could be used and it was easy enough to see that below the lid of ice the lake was fish-belly white with the naked dead, mostly visitors to the area, drawn by legend rather than applying local magic. Pohjolan men used long poles to reach through narrow holes and haul the corpses to the surface. Below the dead, though, were those who had managed to control their bodies. They floated as if suspended in the lake, arms crossed on chests, turning slowly, hovering in the cold waters as they tried to summon the spirits of the deep for whatever purposes preoccupied them.
    I would have to go down among them.
    *   *   *
    And after three ‘days’ of education and preparation, I finally felt ready to do just that. With Jouhkan’s help, I made a passage through the ice, then stripped naked, swallowed the small sedja I had fashioned from a fish bone, and slid feet-first down the tunnel.
    Prepared for the spirits that inhabited the water, I was not prepared for the water itself, and the cold was not just shocking it was almost predatory. I screamed as I plunged downwards, wasting breath for a moment, convinced that a thousand teeth were ripping my flesh. I watched as my body grew extensions of ice. It was all I could do to remember my purpose here as I hung, suspended in the lake, among the slowly turning shapes of shamans and priests, their bodies eerily illuminated from above, where the ice was alive with torchlight. Below, there was a stranger glow, but even my young man’s body was being defeated by the pure, hellish chill.
    So I summoned a little magic, ageing a little, but warmed myself and swam as deep as I could, below the level of the shamans. I summoned what sight I could and scanned the depths. There were ruins below me, or what looked like ruins, probably Enaaki’s hiding place, and faces that watched me,