The Storyteller and Other Tales

By K.V. Johansen

The Storyteller and Other Tales will take you on a journey through exotic worlds and times.

In the title story, set in the world of Blackdog, Marakand, and Gods of Nabban, demon bears take human shape and devils walk in the north of a world where every hill hosts a god and every river and spring a

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sybertooth Inc.
• Release date: Aug 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781927592137

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The Storyteller

and Other Tales

by

K. V. Johansen

Sybertooth Inc.

Sackville, New Brunswick

Copyright © K.V. Johansen 2008

Cover art copyright © Sybertooth 2008 / Cover by Artemisia

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copying, distribution, or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical reviews and articles. This work is entirely fictional. Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is coincidental or fictionalized.

A great deal of work - sometimes years of work - goes into creating literature. There are also many hours of labour spent in editing, proofreading, typesetting, and publishing each book. If you have purchased this e-book through a retailer, thank you. Your payment helps to support the creation and publication of the literary works you enjoy. If you have downloaded a pirated copy of this book, take into consideration that you are not only breaking the law, but you are exploiting the hard work of others in order to get something for nothing. Please respect those who bring you the books you enjoy, either by buying legitimate copies, or by borrowing books for free from your public library.

First published 2008 in paperback by:

Sybertooth Inc.

59 Salem St.

Sackville, New Brunswick

E4L 4J6

Canada

www.sybertooth.ca

This electronic edition published 2016 by Sybertooth. Inc.

ISBN: 978-1-927592-13-7 (e-book)

for the C.O.T.Þ.O.,

which heard these stories first.

Other books by K.V. Johansen

Fiction

Blackdog

The Leopard: Marakand Volume One

The Lady: Marakand Volume Two

Gods of Nabban

The Serpent Bride: Stories From Medieval Danish Ballads

Teen and Children’s Fiction

Nightwalker: The Warlocks of Talverdin I

Treason in Eswy: The Warlocks of Talverdin II

Warden of Greyrock: The Warlocks of Talverdin III

The Shadow Road: The Warlocks of Talverdin IV

Torrie and the Dragon

Torrie and the Pirate-Queen

Torrie and the Firebird

Torrie and the Snake-Prince

Torrie and the Dragonslayers

The Cassandra Virus

The Drone War

The Black Box

Picture Books

Pippin Takes a Bath

Pippin and the Bones

Pippin and Pudding

Non-fiction

Quests and Kingdoms:

A Grown-Up’s Guide to Children’s Fantasy Literature

Beyond Window-Dressing?

Canadian Children’s Fantasy at the Millennium

Foreword

The stories included in this collection were written over a number of years, and take place in a variety of settings. The first two are secondary-world fantasies. The Storyteller is the most recently-written of the works included here, and sets the stage for the novel Blackdog and its sequels, a foretale, if you will. I have always been most interested in writing about people on the edges: the edges of their world, of their society, of humanity. Moth and Mikki, the heroes of The Storyteller, are two of my favourite characters. The epic fantasy Blackdog, in which Moth appears, was written well before this short story, though the short story made it into print first. Blackdog, published by Pyr in 2011, is set a couple of centuries after the events of The Storyteller.

He-Redeems, a different world again, is set in a bronze-age civilisation somewhat modelled on that of ancient Mesopotamia. It spun off from a much longer work, the hero of which is mentioned only in passing, but whose existence precipitates the events of this story.

The Inexorable Tide is a tale of Arthur, rooted more in the historical tradition of Geoffrey of Monmouth than in the romance cycle of Chrétien de Troyes and Malory, though the pagan Ladies make it very much an Arthur in the modern fantasy tradition as well. The story’s most immediate literary influences, however, are Mary Stewart and Rosemary Sutcliff. The Inexorable Tide was first published in Descant 122, vol. 34, no. 3, fall 2003.

Anno Domini Nine Hundred and Ninety-One was inspired by the Old English poem on Maldon, a battle fought by English levies against Norse raiders in 991. The Norse landed on an island, and rather than holding the narrow tidal causeway against them, the local lord, with great regard for the heroic ethos but little tactical sense, gave up this advantage, allowing the Vikings ashore. AD CMXCI (then titled On Þissum Geare) was performed at the Hamilton Public Library by the poet John Ferns and myself in 1994; this is its first appearance in print. The translations from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Old English Maldon (interlaced with the text in italics) are my own. Tolkien wrote a play on the aftermath of the battle, The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son; I found my imagination inspired by the thought of the common men involved, who, though they had their own reasons for fighting, perished for their lord’s pride.

And finally, a word about pronunciation. The names in Anno Domini are Old English; the culture and some of the names in The Storyteller are influenced by early mediaeval Scandinavia and Old Norse; Nimiane, the name if not my conception of the character, is from the French Romance tradition of Arthur but has passed into Modern French and English. Some of the trickier words to the Modern English eye should be read more or less as follows, unless you are a student of medieval languages, in which case feel free to read them as you please! Nimiane > Nim-ee-ayn; Ulfleif > Ulf-lay-eef; Ragnvor > Rahg-n-vor; Hravnmod > Hrav-n-mode; Hrafnsfjall > Hrav-ns-fyall; Pante > Pan-ta; ealdorman > ale-dor-man; Beorhthelm > Bay-orht-helm; Byrhtnoth > Beert-noth; Cerdic > Kair-dich; Cynric > Kin-rich; Aethelred > Eh-thel-red; thegn > thane; geare > ye-ar-ah.

The Storyteller

The storyteller and her giant of a man came to the great wooden hall at Ulvsness when the last red light had faded from the roofs. She didn’t look to be a skald, butterfly bright to show how lords had rewarded her: no gold at wrist and throat, no scrap of eastern silk. Her undyed tunic was overlarge and rolled up at the sleeves, her dark trousers patched at the knees. Even her long braid was the colour of bleached autumn grass. She was a drab moth of a woman, and, standing in the porch where guests would leave their weapons, that was the name she gave the doorwarden.

Moth. A storyteller, from far away.

Young Ulfleif reached the porch in time to hear this, and stopped dead in her headlong rush. Something about the stranger prickled her spine. Maybe it was that she had a look of the last queen, the grandmother Ulf barely remembered, who had either defied fate or served some grim foreknowledge to name her Ulfleif, wolf’s heir.

Ulfleif was late coming to the hall because she had taken her lyre up to the peak of the Mertynsbeorg to spend an afternoon with the god who had watched the lands about long before the first king, Ulfleif’s ancestor, came with his dragon-prowed ships out of the drowned west. The god Mertyn had been in a fey mood, telling Ulfleif, not for the first time that summer, that there were hidden powers come into the land, creeping dangers beyond Mertyn’s strength to clearly see or oppose, and that Ulfleif should warn the queen, who never bothered to climb the god’s crag. Ragnvor the queen would only laugh at her and tell her that since the death of their uncle, who had been their father’s Sword and then Ragnvor’s, Ulfleif could not afford to be a little girl, fretting over what-may-bes.

Ulfleif had gotten Mertyn telling tales of the days before the coming of Hravnmod the Wise, stories of demons and gods and the little first folk who still lived on the high fells. They both forgot the warnings, or pretended they had, trying to shape one of the tales into a new song. Why not? Neither of them had the power to escape whatever doom stalked Ulvsness, or the fates that bound them to it. The gods of the high places were born of the land, and watched over it, but they could not direct the affairs of their folk. When the folk chose to ignore them, there was little they could do. Ulfleif, who would have been a skald, was doomed by birth to carry an ill-omened sword, and probably to die in battle, as nearly every man and woman cursed with that sword had.

It made a good story, but she would rather have been the skald chanting it.

Ulf dodged past the strangers, but had to stop to hitch at Kepra as the sword, still too large for her, snagged on the doorpost. She was skilled, for her age, with any other blade, but Kepra thwarted her even in little things. And in her haste she’d gone and left her lyre on the Mertynsbeorg for the dew to warp. The doorwarden sniggered. Ulfleif glanced up, into the storyteller’s sea-grey eyes, and froze. Not a mere chance resemblance in the bones; it was like staring into her sister’s silver mirror. Her own eyes, her grandmother’s — some bastard kin come home?

The storyteller had to see it too. Who are you? she demanded, as though she had every right to make