A Flame in the North, page 24
“No,” I said. “I do not think so at all, Caelgor the Fair.” And though he was fair indeed, in many senses of the word, still I thought my Astrid fairer.
Arn perhaps knew my decision before I did. “Is it dangerous?” Her chin thrust forward, indicating the orb.
“Of course not.” The Elder looked mildly baffled, his eyebrows rising and his mouth softening. “Merely a small wonder, an amusement, but one an alkuine must unlock. Do you think me likely to harm a woman by guile, maiden-of-the-Wingéd?”
“I am not of them,” she returned, almost hotly. “I was taken by them, my lord Elder.”
“My apologies.” He rolled the orb from palm to palm, a slow easy movement he must have performed many a time while watching light play upon its surface. “I did seek to keep a woman against her will once, but not with violence. And for my part I regret it; that I would change, if I could. You see I give you the honor of honesty, my lady Solveig, even when it does not flatter my pride. I suspect even now Aeredh hurries hither, since one of the wolves watching your door must have gone to tell him I visit.”
And what is he likely to do when he arrives? I could not look away from the silver gleam. Even just to touch something so old, so stainless… “Arneior?”
My shieldmaid looked to me. She did not like his offer; then again, nor did I—and yet. Arn nodded, a fractional movement.
“Very well.” It took most of my courage to let go of the chair and skirt it, seating myself with as much grace as I could muster. Compared to an Elder’s ease, I felt gawky indeed. “Will this thing injure a Secondborn with no seidhr, my lord Caelgor?”
“Of course not.” Again he seemed perplexed. “’Tis merely a toy.”
“Then Arn will take it from you and place it in my hands. I will do what I may, and it is her duty during such matters to keep all who might seek to touch me at bay.” And to kill them, should they persist. It seemed unwise to add that codicil; I contented myself with understatement. “I would not like there to be any… misunderstanding.”
“I see.” Caelgor grew somber, but he offered the orb afresh, extending his arm. “I have no objection, my lady Solveig; I can only thank you for your willingness.”
Arn’s spear dipped slightly; the Elder did not flinch at the motion. Instead, he cocked his golden head a fraction and watched her approach, then dropped the small silver sphere into her free hand.
With that accomplished, she backed away, catlike-ready at every moment, and as the glow strengthened in the window, Nithraen’s dusk or dawn receding and orb-light intensifying, she deposited the Elder thing in my own cupped, waiting palms without needing to look.
A Riddle in Light
You must know your own strength before attempting to surpass it, child.
—Idra the Farsighted of Dun Rithell
Heavy and strangely warm, that smaller orb was also silkensmooth, its texture more like heavy cloth than metal. An unheard hum filled my palms, reverberating like the whisper of the black standing stones to the east of Dun Rithell or the sensation upon waking from a dream sent by the gods. It was also akin to the prickling-skin rush of a blade mighty enough to be named leaving the sheath upon a moonless night.
Though those with seidhr are barred from wielding physical weapons, we still know very well their secret songs.
Arn’s boots settled, and her spear slanted slightly forward, ready to strike. “Do as you must, my weirdling. None shall touch you.” It was the duty she performed least often, but perhaps the most important. Interfering with a volva’s body while one or more of her selves are elsewhere—or while she works a great seidhr—is dangerous for all involved.
“My thanks, small one.” I cradled the orb as Caelgor had, then stroked its carving with my thumb. The lines moved and yet were motionless at the same time, an eerie dichotomy. How beautiful, and how strange.
There was a rushing sound in the hallway, and a shadow filled the door. “You.” Eol did not sound pleased to find the Elder hunter here. “What are you—”
“Be at peace, son of Tharos. I merely brought a gift to the lady.” Caelgor could have sounded a little less amused, but clearly did not care to.
I ignored their voices. The Elder toy was fascinating indeed. The etching was but a single line for all its twists and doublings, it tricked both eye and hand into sensing motion—or did it? The shifting was nothing I’d seen before, yet held a familiarity nonetheless.
“A riddle.” The Old Tongue escaped me, dreamy and slow. It is, after all, the language of seidhr. “I see.” For I did, and my fingers played upon the surface, following its whispers.
“Do not.” Arn’s tone was level as her spear, and chill as the snows outside. “If you seek to touch her, wolfling, I shall strike to kill.”
Then I heard no more, for the taivvanpallo was indeed one of Faevril’s works, and it swallowed me whole.
Yes, it was a riddle, as Idra had often posed while teaching Gwendelint’s daughter the road of seidhr. A volva is not made, nor is she born; instead she must be both born and made. Uncontrolled talent is worse than no ability at all, or so my iron-spined, iron-haired teacher oft repeated.
Look more deeply, child. Look again, and do better.
Some riddles are for drinking, others are for war. Some are for travel, some are for dinner, and others are for marriage. But there are riddles only those with seidhr may answer—indeed, every branch of the great tree holds mysteries only those with its affinity may approach. And among those, lying hidden where even those of water or air may not discover them, are the ones only elementalists know.
The taivvanpallo, mute since it had last left the hands of an Elder alkuine both unsurpassed in crafting and near-unrivaled in war, was of the latter type.
It took time, of course. Arn later said she was half afraid I had stopped breathing while I sat with my fingertips dancing upon the silver surface, my eyes blank and my lips moving slightly as the Old Tongue ran beneath my heartbeat.
For all that, she was not overly worried. In childhood and during early training ’twas my shieldmaid who made certain I did not fall into a brook and drown when one of my selves departed to gather information, or wander from a cliff’s edge when a sudden flood of insight pushed at my feet. She had seen the strangeness, and it bothered her little. It was she who listened to and remembered my halting recitation of what I had prophecy-dreamt, she who watched over my physical self as Idra taught me to breathe deep of drugging fumes and go riding the winds east, south, and as far to the west as the high cliffs broken by cold deep spear-shaped harbors, the Great Sea beyond containing its own seidhr.
Yet I never rode north. At the time I had not wondered at the prohibition, merely accepting it as law. For I loved Idra and trusted her much as I might my own mother’s mother, though that lady had been sent to the god-halls upon a burning boat well before my birth.
The bands at my wrists and forearms sang with piercing-sweet pain, as if the ink were forced under the skin all at once instead of agonizing pin-by-pinprick. I was only dimly aware of my physical self, for I followed the taivvanpallo’s carving through each element in turn.
Metal I tasted, and rich black earth. Fire and smoke filled my veins, ice and limpid wave running underneath their brightness. A cold fresh wind and a hot forge-breath mixed with an indefinable lift, as under the feathered wings of a hawk before diving. A tree’s trunk groaned as a breeze caressed its high crown, sunshine touched my fluttering eyelids, and the peculiar smell which rises from hill and valley late in the darkest of autumn nights filled my nose.
Behind the elements both large and small lingered the invisible spark, the ineffable they flow from. The great tree of seidhr holds endless branch, bole, and leaf, yet the sap rising through its heart is another secret still.
It is that an elementalist touches, or so it has always seemed to me.
My hands moved of their own accord, fingertips brushing or pressing in particular patterns, and cloth-soft silver flowed underneath without a mountain-heart’s heat to make it pliable. The red coral in my braids sang piping-sweet chorus, not a stone but a collection of infinitely tiny skeletons somehow pressed into hard durability; the wool of my dress was made of the sad gazes of sheep and the grazing they did upon sunny hillsides as well as the thump-whirr of spinning and the clack of a loom, the stab of bright needles and the chatter of sewing women. The felt of my slippers, the thread of their embroidery, the precious beaten ore of my torc and the dreams of the smith who crafted it—oh, all, all of it I felt as the taivvanpallo opened like a flower.
The “toy” showed me glimpses of hills so green they hurt to gaze upon, a conical forge glowing hot, and a tall Elder man, his dark hair with a single streak of pure sunshine along one side, his hands sure and deft as he tossed molten metal from one palm to the other. He whispered a seidhr that burst against the white stone walls of a workroom cluttered with fascinating implements, drenched in silvergold light the hanging globes of Nithraen could not rival. He spoke in the Old Tongue; my own mouth followed the shape of his words, the accent ancient and unbearably pure.
“Thus I make you, and thus you shall be.”
It was no longer a sphere. Instead, a silver flower bloomed in my hands, its cupped petals holding captive a single point of brilliance. Shadows, knife-sharp and ink-black, painted the walls—for not only did my shieldmaid stand straight and slim, barring all from approaching as her spearblade hung in readiness, but Caelgor the golden-haired son of Faevril stood in that room of Nithraen-that-was, as well as Eol son of Tharos and Aeredh son of Aerith. One of Eol’s fellow Northerners was at the door as well, and his shadow had star-bright eyes and shaggy edges.
A taivvanpallo, after all, will show the truth even in what its light does not touch. But I did not know it then.
It was open for a few heartbeats, no more. The petals whispered as they closed, and I heard every word of impossibly ancient seidhr. I could not fully remember nor replicate what he said. But I knew the voice was of the man who had created this thing, and that he had taken joy in its making.
A further pang, hidden but incontrovertible, was the deeper satisfaction in knowing none but an alkuine could open the toy, loosing its beauty into the world. Only an aching glimpse would be granted those who did not share an elementalist’s gift, and the knowledge pleased him mightily.
For he knew well, did Faevril the Dispossessed, that he was unique among his kind.
Arn afterward said it took a long while indeed for the thing to open, while Caelgor and Eol exchanged sharp words and Aeredh arrived, alerted by an almost-breathless Efain. The scarred Northerner had been set to watch the house door, and had seen the blond hunter’s approach. All told an hour, maybe more, passed while I sat bolt upright in the chair with my hands working at the orb’s surface, and she was quite content to let the men wrangle as long as they did not attempt to approach me.
And then it glowed, Arn said, dismissing the wonder as only a shieldmaid can.
For me it was no longer than a few breaths before the flowering of the sphere, and when the light receded and I was left holding a smooth silver globe, the carving on its surface had changed. Oh, it still looked the same to those without seidhr, I suppose.
But to my eyes the marks made a word, though not in the runes Idra and my mother had taught me.
And that word was, simply, Light.
Half Done, Worse than Not
Once the Enemy did not cover himself in darkness. There was no need, for he was the Allmother’s eldest, most glorious son. But no heart may be satisfied once envy has filled it, and no soul untwisted once lies have taken deep root in the tongue. Now his malice is blacker than cave-night, and of all things he fears the cleansing of light. Even stealing the Jewels did not sate his greed, and he takes no joy in their beauty.
Because it burns.
—Anonymous, from the Paehallen Manuscript
Orb-glow had returned. Nithraen was once again full of song threading through paved or cobbled lanes, blending in every corner. I cradled the taivvanpallo in my lap, staring at stainless, secretive curves; Caelgor the Hunter took his leave of me as if there were no others in the room. Keep it, he said in the southron tongue, as a gift from one you have done a great service, albeit unknowing. When you leave Nithraen, my lady alkuine, my brother and I ride with you.
Then, with a courteous nod in Arneior’s direction, he was gone. He passed Efain at the door, and the scarred Northerner’s gaze upon him was unkind, to say the least.
Not that the Elder deigned to notice.
“Well,” Aeredh said heavily, his hands clasped behind his back. “Faevril’s Oath continues to cause grief.”
“I thought you were to guard our lady alkuine.” Eol faced Arneior as if challenged, but my shieldmaid’s spear was steady and her shoulders relaxed. “Yet you let that—”
“He caused no harm to us.” Arn would not brook scolding, especially by this Northerner. “Indeed he was more honest with my Solveig than you cared to be, wolfling.”
“Was he?” Eol’s ire mounted, and leapt in my direction besides. “Whatever he told you was only in service to finding what Bjornwulf and Lithielle won at great cost. He and his brother will slay any who seek to keep the Freed Jewel from them, even their kin—that is their oath, and they swore it upon the Allmother and Unmaking itself. They will hunt us when we leave here, and the rest of Faevril’s living sons will come riding upon their trail.”
I stared at the taivvanpallo, breathing deeply. Its seidhr settled within me, a sweet-edged burning I did not know how to quench; I felt as an almost-consumed candle must, eaten even as it flares.
Arn’s shrug was a marvel of loose fluidity, though her spear-point did not move. “Perhaps they will treat us with more honor than you have.”
“Soft, my friend.” Aeredh laid a hand upon Eol’s shoulder as the Northerner took a single step forward. “Look to your lady, shieldmaid. It is no small thing to master even one of Faevril’s minor works, and she is pale.”
Pale? No, I felt as if I had Mother’s ague, but the shivering was turned inward, sharptooth mice nibbling at my bones.
“Then withdraw,” Arn snapped. “I will not have liars near my weirdling. Sol?”
Water. I thought of the great broad-backed river at the foot of Tarnarya oozing through mud at the reed-banks, or the soft sliding sound clear liquid makes upon stones. Snow-fed in spring, our motherstream was clear and cold even in summer, though she rarely froze even in deepest winter. She teemed with fat silver fish, and even the sucking black clay in certain places along her shore could be used for pottery or dye, not to mention wattle and daub. A giving dam indeed, our river, and though I was far north among strangers I could still summon the scent of her wide rippleshimmer back, familiar as my own breath.
“Hurry,” Aeredh said in the Old Tongue, from very far away. “Bring me the flask, there are cups aplenty.”
Cold liquid memory met the burning of the taivvanpallo; I expected steam to burst from the two opposing forces, leaking from my skin and clouding the room like herb-water cast over hot-glowing stones in a sauna. My heart was a blacksmith’s fastest hammer in my throat and wrists, and my scalp was damp. Saltprickle moisture collected under my arms, behind my knees, and I shuddered hard enough that the chair shifted under me.
When the seizure ended, I sagged, blinking at the bright smear of the world. Arn’s face swam into view, blue woad-stripe down one side cracking though it had been recently reapplied, and she did not touch me. Nor had she allowed anyone else to, for which I was most grateful. Still, my dress was all but sopping, and the soft almost-constant singing of Nithraen’s Elder citizens scraped against my ears. I had sweated through fine heartsblood wool; I could have eaten a whole chunk of salt and asked for more, like a great antlered winter-deer.
“Here.” Aeredh was at Arn’s shoulder, and he offered one of the jeweled goblets from the table. The liquid within shimmered restively. “We must have her drink, shieldmaid.”
I am well enough, I wanted to say, but my voice would not do its duty.
“We cannot touch her.” My shieldmaid straightened, and I suspect she did not attempt to strike him only because her current anxiety outweighed the matter of his proximity. “Not even a fingertip, Elder. Step away.”
“What is it?” Eol hovered as well, but farther away. Efain drifted close to his captain, his scars pale and the rest of him following suit. A shaggy blurring hung over the Secondborn men; the Northerners were black blots, and for the first time I wondered why they wore such cloth.
Our riverfolk love color, the brighter the better. Not only does it show one’s wealth, but it is cheersome to look upon, and lifts the spirits when the long dark nights of winter settle over the world.
My hand twitched. It took a great, drowsing effort to lift my fingers from the silver orb, still in my lap. Then to make my entire arm move, my fingers stretched pleadingly toward Arn, was another deep, terrible striving.
Her hand met mine with a shock like two angry warriors upon Dun Rithell’s training-yard. Her skin was dry and warm, my own flesh terribly cold despite the burning. More than that, the seidhr-sense of another thinking, breathing life swamped me. A clear disciplined heat-haze hung upon her, and a great rushing of soft feathers passed through us both.
It helped, though not nearly enough. I exhaled harshly, my lung-cargo chopped into segments by a wave of trembling. “Arn,” I whispered. “Arneior.”
“My weirdling.” But her smile was a shadow of itself, and though her gaze was not nearly so piercing as my mother’s when she suspected wrongdoing, it was still a blow against my own. “The Elder has a drink he says may help. Will you take it?”
It could hardly hurt. I could not even nod; all my will was focused on clasping her hand. She did not let go, but she did suffer Aeredh to lean close and put the goblet to my lips.
Whatever the cup contained was warm, strangely spicy, and drowned the embers buried in my chest. It did little for the weakness, but my consciousness did not gutter like a candle in a cold draft again either. My joints ached, like Idra’s when the weather changed.
