The Scaler of the Peaks E-Book

Karin Erlandsson

• Herausgeber: Young Dedalus
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: Young Dedalus 7
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 249

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

The Scaler of Peaks is the third book in the four-part series Song of the Eye Stone. Set in a fantastical world, it is an epic saga of friendship, longing and the things that really matter in life. Iberis has destroyed the northern port town. Miranda, Syrsa and Lydia have set out on a quest to find the eye stone – the source of Iberis' power - and destroy it. Together they must scale inhospitable peaks, battle the cold, and navigate the strange ways of the mountain folk in order to journey deep into the mountains, where the eye stone is being held. But they have no idea what dangers lie in store for them…

Leseprobe

Young Dedalus

General Editor: Timothy Lane

The Scaler of the Peaks

This work has been published with the financial assistance of FILI — Finnish Literature Exchange

Published in the UK by Dedalus Limited

24-26, St Judith’s Lane, Sawtry, Cambs, PE28 5XE

[email protected]

www.dedalusbooks.com

ISBN printed book 978 1 915568 14 4

ISBN ebook 978 1 915568 20 5

Dedalus is distributed in the USA & Canada by SCB Distributors

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[email protected]    www.scbdistributors.com

Dedalus is distributed in Australia by Peribo Pty Ltd

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[email protected]    www.peribo.com.au

First published by Dedalus in 2023

Bergsklattraren (Legendomogonstenen3)

Copyright © Karin Erlandsson 2019

Published originally in Swedish by Schilds & Soderstoms

Published by agreement with Helsinki Literary Agency

Translation copyright @ Annie Prime 2023

The right of Karin Erlandsson to be identified as the author & Annie Prime as the translator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Printed and bound in the UK by Clays, Elcograf S.p.A.

Typeset by Marie Lane

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

The Author

Karin Erlandsson, born in 1978, is one of the most successful and most acclaimed children’s authors in the Swedish language. She is a Swedish-speaking Finnish author and journalist who has won many literary prizes.

Dedalus has published the first two books in the Song of the Eye Stone series: The Pearl Whisperer and The Bird Master in 2022. Book three The Scaler of the Peaks will be followed by the final book: The Victor in the autumn of 2023.

All four books have been translated by Annie Prime.

The Translator

Annie Prime is a prize-winning translator of children’s fiction from Swedish into English. She has translated the four-part series Song of the Eye Stone by Karin Erlandsson, for Dedalus.

Contents

The Medicine Woman

In the Glade

Can the Eye Stone be Destroyed?

The Forest Comes to an End

Syrsa Blows the Bugle

Miranda’s Promise

Climbing With One Arm

Meeting

Mountains Never End

Nothing for Dinner

Under the Starry Sky

The Mountain Village

The First Trade Deal

Miranda’s Realisation

The Flags

Syrsa Pretends

Suspicion

Escape

Safe in the Nook

Which way inside the Mountain?

Rockfall

Echo

Mother of Pearl

The Dream

Only One Way Forward

Vanished

Through the Door

Agreement

Syrsa’s Trade

In the Medicine Woman’s House

Lydia’s Idea

The Silver Village

Once upon a time

Import of Provisions

Knowledge

The Cable Car

The Medicine Women

In the Spring

Burglary

To the Outside

The Song in the Mountain

Syrsa is Abandoned

Farewell

The Silver Saw

Escape through the Mountain

The Avalanche

Silence

In a Rock Crevice

Recommended Reading

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The Medicine Woman

I must have fallen asleep, because when I open my eyes it is daylight and Syrsa has climbed up a copper pine tree.

“The port town is all dark,” she calls down. “It just looks like a black square. It’s quite far away.”

The copper pine sways with Syrsa’s movements. Lydia stands beneath the tree and holds out her arms.

“Are you planning on catching her if she falls?” I ask.

Syrsa laughs her bell-chime laughter.

“Don’t laugh,” says Lydia. “I’m the one who would have to tend to your injuries.”

“I can tend to myself if I fall,” she says. “Lichen for crushed bones, and forest mistletoe to relieve pain, and marrowseed for surgery.”

“You’ve taught her well,” I say.

“She’s keen,” says Lydia. “Which is good. We need more medicine women. Everybody is obsessed with pearls, no one thinks about what happens in the quest for them.”

“Except you.”

“Exactly. Except me and Syrsa.”

“I can’t see where the forest ends,” says Syrsa from high up in the copper pine. “But I can see the mountains. They’re much taller than the trees and very far away. Are we going to walk the whole way?”

“The whole way,” I say.

It doesn’t take long to melt snow into water, gather bark from the copper pine and cook some porridge. It’s as if we have always been travelling together.

“Don’t we have any jam? I liked that jam that your mama made. It was really yummy even though it was old. I wish we’d taken a few jars with us. This bark porridge isn’t so nice, it tastes like licking trees.”

Lydia smiles. “Like licking trees?”

“Only greener. The porridge tastes greener.”

“I think it tastes good,” I say.

“Aren’t there any berries? We should pick berries.”

“But Syrsa,” says Lydia, “there’s snow everywhere — how are we supposed to pick berries in the snow?”

“What do people eat in the mountains?”

It has been a long time since I thought about the mountains and how to survive beyond the borders of the forest.

“There are goats that you can catch and milk sometimes. If you’re lucky. People who live in the mountains mine silver from caves and transport it via the train that runs between the eastern region and the Queen’s City. Then they get sent food in return.”

“There’s a train?”

“It only has two carriages and it runs manually.”

Lydia eats up the last of her porridge and washes the plate in the snow.

“We should take some of this bark with us, the one that tastes like licking trees.”

“Oh no,” says Syrsa. “Isn’t there anything else?”

“You can eat anything if you’re hungry enough,” says Lydia. “Why don’t you show me how you collect the bark?”

They crawl under the low canopy of the copper pine and I hear Syrsa’s voice.

“You hold the knife like this. You can use that thin one you use to cut roots. You scrape the brown off until the white shows through. Then you can make porridge out of it.”

I pour snow over the fire. Soon all that remains of our camp is a wet, smoking pile. I leave the stone circle where it is; someone else might come this way and be glad to find a fire pit.

Other than Lydia’s medicine bag, which also holds Syrsa’s bugle, we only have one satchel each. I tie the pot to mine and put the blanket in Lydia’s.

Syrsa and I found the eye stone, the mythical pearl that everybody covets. Anyone who finds it need never desire anything ever again, but whoever decides to search for it will never desire anything else.

We gave the eye stone to Iberis, which resulted in consequences we never could have imagined. Iberis tamed the dagpies and forced all the people in the Queendom to the northern port town. We liberated the town before it burned to the ground. Iberis managed to escape in the fire.

“Ow!”

“Lydia, what are you doing? That’s not the way to do it — you’re bleeding!”

I hurry underneath the copper pine. Syrsa lifts Lydia’s arm above her head.

“The knife slipped,” says Lydia.

“Lydia can handle a knife, I know she can, but she isn’t used to bark and she pulled too hard and her other hand was beneath it and… look!”

Blood seeps out between Syrsa’s fingers and drips onto the moss. It looks like red pearls.

“It’s fine,” says Lydia. “It’s just a surface wound.”

“It went deep,” says Syrsa. “It’s bleeding a lot. Miranda, get the medicine bag, there’s butter nectar and bandages inside.

“It’s really not that bad,” says Lydia.

I can hear in her voice that she is straining to sound normal.

“Miranda, get the bag!”

I stumble out from under the copper pine and grab the black medicine bag.

If you cut yourself while diving, on a mussel or a pinch tick, the blood disappears into the water straightaway. The only time I saw blood in the ocean was when that rose-shark bit off my arm, and the water was stained pink all around me.

“First you have to —” Lydia begins.

“I know,” Syrsa interrupts. “I’m the medicine woman now, you’re the patient.”

Syrsa takes out a small bottle of translucent yellow liquid and tips a few drops onto Lydia’s finger. The top of her fingertip looks like its dangling loose and I look away.

“This might sting a little,” she says. “But not too much.”

She takes out some dried leaves and puts them in her mouth. She grimaces as she chews, then takes the mush out of her mouth and puts it on Lydia’s wound.

When Syrsa was little she lost her arm to a rose-shark as well, but it makes no difference to her ability to tend to Lydia’s wound. Neither of us mind having one arm. You rarely need two, actually.

“Now we just need a bandage on it, and you’ll feel better soon.”

She sounds just like Lydia.

In the Glade

We don’t get around to leaving today. The sun goes down so early. It’s winter, of course, but still. I don’t appreciate the delay.

“There’s nothing to be done about it,” says Syrsa. “Lydia needs rest — she’s lost blood.”

“It really isn’t that bad,” says Lydia, still smiling. “It was just a surface wound.”

But she is still pale and winces when she thinks I’m not looking.

“We’ll stay,” I say. “But we have to keep going tomorrow.”

Syrsa sits beside Lydia, feeling her forehead from time to time and shaking her head. Sometimes she nods.

The forest is so quiet that I feel like standing up and shouting. No forest should be this quiet.

“It mustn’t spread,” says Lydia when I sigh for the fourth time.

“I know,” I say. “I know it mustn’t.”

I have placed stones around the fire and built up a little snow bank. Besides, the ground underneath is damp. The fire can’t possibly spread.

Wood crackles and hisses. This is what it sounded like when the town burned, when I stood outside the blazing town gate not knowing whether Syrsa and Lydia had made it out alive.

I stretch my arm and legs. They making cracking sounds like breaking twigs. It wasn’t all that long ago that I was paralysed; I am not as strong as I used to be.

“Can you manage?” asks Lydia.

“Yes,” I say.

I don’t want her to worry about me, so I ask her: “Have you ever been in the mountains?”

“Never,” she says. “I’ve only seen them from a boat.”

“It’s not the same,” I say. “The mountains are a lot bigger close up.”

“So they say,” says Lydia. “But that’s hard to imagine.”

“Mountains are nothing like the sea. When you work in the sea everything is… well, you know. It’s light. Everything is brighter than on land.”

“I know,” Lydia says. “The colours are more intense; everything is more beautiful when you dive.”

“Inside the mountains everything is uglier. The caves are dark with nothing but torches to light up the narrow passageways. You forget what it’s like to breathe fresh air. There are blocks of silver larger than boats, but even they aren’t enough. Nothing is enough in the mountains.”

“And that’s where Iberis is.”

“There’s no better place in the Queendom to hide than the mountains.”

Lydia strokes Syrsa’s hair.

“They look so beautiful from the outside.”

Lydia and Syrsa have dived for medicinal plants together ever since we came to the port town. Syrsa helped out when one of the woodcutters was badly injured.

They look like they belong together, sitting side by side at the fire.

“I’m going to explore a bit,” I say.

It is only a few steps before I am enveloped in dense forest. The Queen keeps certain parts of the forest protected from woodcutters. Some say she wants to let the trees grow as high as possible, that she is planning on building a vast ship and grand castle. But I think the Queen understands the forest.

Parts of it must be left alone. Some trees must remain untouched.

There are always paths that lead to the mountains and I want to find one. I know there must be one here somewhere.

I climb up a mountain willow and look out in all directions but see no path. I stay there with my arm around the trunk and let myself sway back and forth with the tree for a while.

You can sway with the waves on a boat, or sway in the wind on a tree, but nothing moves in the mountains. Everything stays still, everything is petrified.

I close my eyes and feel the tree moving beneath me.

When I open my eyes again, I don’t know how much time has passed. The sun is lower and the trees have taken on a different shade. Something glitters in the next tree. I don’t understand what it is at first.

Then I realise what it must be. I recognise the gold colour.

I have to climb to the very end of the branch and grip with my knees in order to reach out and grab hold of the fabric. A scrap of golden fabric.

I stay there for a few moments, hanging from my knees and holding the fabric in my hand. Then I climb down and walk back to Lydia and Syrsa.

“Look what I found.”

I hold out the golden fabric.

“A piece of a cape,” says Lydia.

Syrsa immediately huddles up into a ball.

“I don’t want Iberis to find me.”

“We don’t know that it’s hers,” says Lydia. “It could be any one of her guards; they were all wearing golden capes.”

The golden guards are all the pearl fishers who have ever longed to find the eye stone and pledged their allegiance to Iberis when it came into her possession.

“You said the mountains are the best hiding place in the Queendom, and that’s where Iberis has gone,” says Syrsa. “Why are we looking for her if we won’t be able to find her?”

“Because we have to try. She has the eye stone.”

“You can’t leave me alone for a single second,” says Syrsa.

“You have to remember what Hildegard said,” says Lydia. “She said that Iberis’ desires can never override our desires. So long as we have a will of our own, Iberis can’t have everything.”

Can the Eye Stone be Destroyed?

We set off again the next morning.

“You have to be careful,” Syrsa says to Lydia. “Say so at once if you feel dizzy. You’ve lost blood.”

Lydia ruffles Syrsa’s tufty pony tails.

“Don’t worry so much. You have to trust the body to heal itself.”

“So why do anything?”

“A medicine woman must do everything within her power, but she must also know when there’s nothing more she can do. When there’s nothing to do but wait and have faith.”

“What does that mean?”

“Trust that everything will work out for the best,” says Lydia.

“I don’t like faith,” I say.

“No,” Lydia says. “That I can believe.”

“It usually doesn’t end well.”

“Faith is difficult,” says Lydia. “It’s the hardest thing for a healer to learn.”

We walk further and further away from the northern port town.

My legs fall into the same rhythm as they always do when I walk in the forest. It’s the rhythm I learned from my father when we used to walk to the felling area where we worked. It is Papa’s pace.

“Always look ahead in the direction you’re walking.”

I hear Papa’s voice so clearly in my head that I almost expect to see him here among the trees.

As long as we keep up a good pace we should get there tomorrow.

“Where’s the mountain?” Syrsa asks.

She sounds out of breath. She hasn’t learned how to walk in the forest yet.

“Is it far?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

It’s just as well that they are learning how to walk through the forest. They have to find their own rhythm. Long strides, eyes forward, not down. I squeeze the fabric in my pocket.

“Diving is easier,” says Syrsa.

The sun is low and its rays are slanting across the bottom of the tree trunks. Soon it will be dark again. But I want to continue, I want to get ahead.

“Look,” Syrsa says breathlessly behind me. “Another piece of golden fabric!”

I stop and look around, but the whole forest is tinged golden in the dying sunlight. I see no fabric.

“There,” says Syrsa, pointing at a branch too high to reach.

“Always keep looking ahead,” I mumble.

“What if we’re supposed to find them?” says Lydia. “What if Iberis wants us to follow her?”

I hadn’t thought of that.

Is Iberis expecting us? Could this be her plan? Could she be waiting to capture us before we can get the eye stone?

I know that Iberis is capable of anything.

I slide the fabric between my fingers in my pocket.

We stop in a clearing surrounded by tall emerald crowns. The trees are so big that the snow hasn’t been able to penetrate their canopies, and the moss on the ground is such a bright green that it almost hurts my eyes.

We set up camp, light a fire, gather snow, we do everything just as we did before.

Lydia is splitting branches into thinner pieces and Syrsa sits beside her, saying she has to keep watch to make sure Lydia doesn’t let the knife slip.

“There are no birds here,” says Syrsa.

“They’ll come back,” says Lydia. “Birds always come back. Maybe not tomorrow, but they will come back.”

“How do you know?” I say.

“I know,” she says simply. “The same way you know that the eye stone is in the mountains.”

“I know that because Fjalar said so,” I say.

But Lydia has lain down on her back next to Syrsa to look up at the stars. She isn’t listening to me.

Fjalar was one of the people that Iberis had kept captive in the northern port town. He came from a mountain village that helped Iberis to hide the eye stone in the mountains. That’s why I know where we must go.

Lydia laughs, which is a very rare occurrence, and I look over in her direction.

They are pointing at constellations and completely ignoring the fact that we have to gather soft bark for porridge and that three people need a lot of bark and it’s going to take time.

“Miranda,” says Syrsa. “Come and look at this. The Wolf Guardian has a red star. Lydia says that means spring is coming.”

“I don’t have time,” I say.

“Come on,” says Lydia. “We’re not in any hurry.”

“Of course we are,” I say. “We have to find the eye stone before Iberis can move it.”

I haven’t even dared think it all day, but now Lydia is forcing me to say it out loud.

“I think Iberis gathered everyone in the northern port town so that she could attack the Queen without interference. Just like everyone else, she believed she was going to get everything she wanted, and I think she wants to become queen.”

“But she was wrong. Her desires could never defeat ours. Her desire isn’t greater than our desire to be free,” says Lydia. “Hence why Syrsa was able to break free and save the town, and why the birds were able to fly into the fire.”

“If Iberis can’t destroy our desire, if even the birds’ desires are greater than hers, then what’s she going to do?”

“It isn’t greater,” says Lydia. “But it’s just as strong.”

Syrsa speaks as though to the sky.

“I hate desire,” she says. “It just means wanting something you don’t have.”

“As long as we continue wanting, it means things can change,” says Lydia.

Syrsa sighs and the little cloud that rises skyward reminds me how cold it is.

“Tell us exactly what happens when you blow the bugle,” I say to Syrsa.

“The pearls roll towards me. I blow and they come, it’s super easy. I can just sit in a boat and blow, and they all come to me.”

“Just like when I used to whistle,” says Lydia.

Lydia was once a pearl whisperer too, but the ability to summon pearls disappears in adulthood. Lydia made up her mind never to dive for pearls again. She looks for medicinal plants on the seabed instead.

I’ve filled the pot with snow but I linger at the edge of the clearing. I look at Lydia and Syrsa, the only two pearl whisperers in the world.

Neither of them seem to think that their ability is interesting; they don’t even want to be pearl whisperers. If I could summon pearls I would never do anything else.

“The white ones crackle and the green ones sound like the sea,” says Syrsa.

“You know more than I ever did,” Lydia says with a laugh. “I’d love to hear pearls.”

“They’re mainly a nuisance,” says Syrsa. “They make so much noise all the time.”

The fire warms and lights up their faces.

“Shall I try to blow the bugle?” says Syrsa.

“The eye stone didn’t answer when you blew it from the northern port town,” I say.

“But we’re closer now,” says Lydia.

She opens the medicine bag and takes out Syrsa’s bugle.

Nothing about its appearance gives away that it summons pearls. It is a perfectly ordinary silver bugle. I have tried blowing it and nothing happened. The pearls only come to Syrsa when she blows it.

“Tomorrow,” I say. “Tomorrow you can blow it, when we’re closer.”

I want to be sure that we are close enough.

“If we’re lucky the eye stone will come rolling straight toward us and all we will have to do is wait,” I say, putting the pot over the fire.

“I don’t think so,” says Lydia. “The golden guards also want the eye stone, that’s why they’ve joined leagues with Iberis. She has to guard the eye stone and make sure no one else can get to it.”

“We don’t know that,” I say.

“Fjalar said the eye stone is chained up in the mountain. And that’s why it didn’t come.”

“He was just guessing,” I say. “It might not be. It might come now that we’re closer, it might break free.”

I have seen Syrsa work her magic, I have looked on in astonishment as pearls have come rolling towards us and settled beneath our boat. When Syrsa blows that bugle, anything is possible.

“You can blow it tomorrow,” I say. “And then the eye stone will come rolling down and then we…”

The fire burns with intense flames that cast shadows on Lydia’s face.

“And then what, Miranda? What do you plan to do if the eye stone does come rolling towards us and becomes yours?”

“I…”

I don’t know what to say to that. Once upon a time the eye stone was all I wanted, but then I found Syrsa instead, and Lydia.

“It has to be destroyed,” says Syrsa. “I don’t want it to exist any more.”

“Don’t be silly, of course we’re not going to destroy the eye stone,” I say.

“I don’t think it’s silly at all,” says Lydia. “It’s exactly what we have to do.”

“Absolutely not,” I say. “The eye stone has always existed, the eye stone is the most valuable pearl in the world. We can’t destroy it.”

“What are we going to do then? Keep it?”

“Or sell it. The Queen would pay any price.”

Lydia shakes her head.

“Then the Queen will get everything she has ever longed for, and then what will happen to her? And what if the legends are true: that if the eye stone is in the possession of the Queen, its power is shared with all the people of the Queendom?”

“Then everyone will get what they desire.”

“Do you really think that’s a good thing?”

There they are, the only two pearl whisperers in the world, and the only people in the whole world who don’t want the eye stone.

I grip the fabric in my pocket and think about what would happen if I just left them there by the fire, climbed the mountain by myself and joined Iberis’ golden guards.

Then at least I could be near the eye stone.

The Forest Comes to an End

I wake the others before the sun comes up. I didn’t really sleep properly and the fire’s embers are still aglow, but still I urge the others up.

“We can make another fire later. I want to get moving. We’re already late.”

“Late for what?” says Lydia.

“I want to get going,” I say. “We’ve been too relaxed, we have to hurry now.”

I snatch the pot out of Syrsa’s hand and attach it to my satchel.

“What’s got into you?” asks Lydia.

“Nothing, I just want to go.”

I stamp on the embers and move stones around the firepit.

Eventually we set off, and Syrsa skips ahead among the trees. We can’t see the sun but I know where it is: straight ahead, behind the mountains. We should get there by evening, perhaps earlier, as long as we don’t take too many breaks.

“How would we go about destroying the eye stone anyway? I don’t know, I’ve never seen a pearl break apart,” Syrsa babbles. “And the eye stone is a pearl so it would have to be destroyed in the same way as any other pearl, but I have no idea how to destroy a pearl. Do you, Miranda?”

“What?”

“You’re not even listening! Lydia, do you know?”

“We’ll think of something,” says Lydia. “It will be alright.”

I scoff. There Lydia goes again with her faith and optimism that everything will work out.

“What are you sniffing at?”

“Nothing, I just had something in my nose.”

“Spring is in the air,” says Lydia.

We walk and walk, and I keep expecting to see the grey mass of mountains at any moment. These trees can’t go on forever.

As we walk, my mind is on the eye stone. If we find it I could sell it to the Queen. Then I could give Lydia and Syrsa everything they could possibly wish for; we could built a big house in the southern region and go diving everyday. Or I could always keep it for myself. We don’t have to tell the Queen anything.

Lydia and Syrsa don’t understand. They aren’t as skilled at pearl fishing as I am. Their power to summon pearls means they never had to learn to dive as well as me. They don’t know the seabed and its dangers, they have never felt that the pearls belong to them.

They say that the eye stone is the mother of all pearls. When we find it we will have to keep it hidden, but I would be able to see it any time I liked.

I was the one who let Iberis have the eye stone. I had to choose between the eye stone and Syrsa, and I chose Syrsa.

I close my fist tightly around the scrap of golden fabric I found and imagine the eye stone, shining and shimmering, and how cool it would feel against my hand.