A Flame in the North, page 30
When the drifts reached knee-high, the group halted. I thought they wished to give us more sitheviel, though the scant swallow I had taken earlier—the last in Eol’s black-glass flask—still burned inside me. Instead, each Secondborn was given to an Elder companion, who grasped their arm. By some seamless seidhr our steps were lightened, and we walked atop the snow’s white crust, as if we had left our heavier bodies behind and went forward with only our subtler selves. Even Arn, once she understood what they wished, consented to give her left elbow to Daerith the harpist, his bow riding his back and her spear riding hers.
Only infrequently and at great need does a shieldmaid carry her weapon thus.
Daerith also sometimes touched my shoulder, for Arn suffered him to walk between us since he carried no blade save a short curved healer’s knife, and no other weapon save his bow. A burst of seidhr from that brief contact warmed me each time, and even soothed some of the swelling upon my face.
Aeredh tucked my hand in the crook of his right arm as if we were about to ring-dance around a summerpole, and the first few steps upon unbroken snow, my boots weightless against its smooth clean sweep, were almost a joy. We forged onward, some of the Elder singing softly, their voice barely disturbing the sough of wind among treetops. Bare branches appeared, and evergreens weighed by white blankets under a thin gleaming ice-skin.
I stared at my feet moving as if unconnected with the rest of me, the tang of sitheviel mixing with blood in my mouth. The cut inside my cheek stung if I tried to speak, so I did not bother. I could not even concentrate enough to untangle what weirding they used to walk thus.
A stream too swift to freeze still bore ice at its fringes, a single slender stone bridge over its silvery back. On the far side a bloody sunset dyed snowy forest, and I gathered we were no longer in Nithraen’s lands. I expected us to make some manner of camp, but the Elder continued walking so the Northerners, Arneior, and I were obliged to as well. A short purple dusk gave way to clear new-winter night, the kind that kills if one has no shelter or fire.
Yet the Elder are hardy, and one or two were always singing. The music, laced with seidhr, was part lament for Nithraen and part quiet exhortation to keep lungs and limbs from freezing solid; I sensed, almost saw, how it drew strength from earth, stone, and tree, feeding trickles into the Children of the Star and their more fragile companions.
Shivers gripped me. Aeredh freed his arm from my hand only to slide it over my shoulders and draw me close, his warmth somehow spreading to drive back the killing cold. Arneior made no objection; she was too occupied with the warming breath, a shieldmaid’s strength pitted against deep winter. The harpist no doubt helped her, but I was too weary to worry.
I merely endured.
Starlight filtered through snow-laden or bare boughs. Soft bluish radiance strengthened around the Elder, not so much actual light as a form of clarity. Eol was braced between the two spear-wielders, breathing shallowly and staggering oft. I did my best not to trip, and after a cold eternity the waning moon shed more faint glow from a bright, cloudless sky.
At some point I thought longingly of Dun Rithell, and lifted out of myself.
Under a vault spread with diamond-chip stars, the greathall stood silent. All were abed—all save one, for a single candle burned in the stillroom, where a golden-haired girl stood before a wooden table cluttered with familiar implements.
Astrid, her face buried in her hands and her shoulders shaking, wept. Even in the dead of night she muffled the sound. The candle flickered under a breath from nowhere, but she did not notice, too sunk in her grief.
The warriors were at muttering, soft-breathing rest; the women’s quarters deathly quiet. Up stairs and down a short hall, in his closet a short distance from our parents’, Bjorn curled upon his side, a great strong body sleeping curiously childlike, damp traces upon his bearded cheeks as if he sorrowed while dreaming. A few rooms away my mother lay in her husband’s arms, both deeply unconscious, but my father’s brow furrowed as his eyes flickered under their lids.
My mother’s lips twitched. She, too, was dreaming of something. Her outflung hand, resting upon a fold of woolen counterpane her daughters had embroidered a few winters ago, stretched pleadingly.
I am well enough, whatever self I had sent home whispered, anxious to ease her. Be at peace.
In the stillroom, the candle flickered again. I sought to brush against Astrid, to comfort her. But the vision was fading like sun-bleached cloth, and I burst from the roof of Dun Rithell as a white-wingéd bird, circling once before arrowing northward.
Above, the great river of stars echoed with faint sweet voices. Yet a dark grasp was upon me, drew me steadily, swifter and swifter, my heart thundering with each wingbeat.
Long I flew, under a waning moon turned leering-yellow as bad cheese. Forest, river, mountain, infrequent steading—they wheeled below my tucked-tight claws, barely glimpsed before vanishing. Snow gleamed, and knifelike peaks rose in sawtooth progression. Starlight faded, soft silver voices suffocated behind a thickness neither cloud nor mist.
Sickening heaviness clotted about me, a terrible pressure squeezing both breath and pulse. The subtle bodies do not need such things, but they are anchored in the physical, and ’tis air and blood which fuel every living thing. Even the subtle selves may be injured, if their bearer believes the strike does some damage.
Or if the attacker is strong enough, and skilled enough, in seidhr.
I struggled, but it did no good. I was drawn inexorably northward, and in the far distance a low crimson glow rose, swelling like a boil as I approached. Great black towers rent the sky, their angular battlements sharp as needles, and endless, terrifying screams rose from deep vents in riven stone. A sickening fog drowned all healthful light, leaving only a pale fungal glow in secret caves; leaping ruddy fires gave no cheer, for they were unwholesome and feasted upon flesh as well as other noisome fuel. Orukhar and worse thronged the vast citadel’s ramparts and battlements; underneath their anthill seething I sensed passages, hallways, and mines carved deep in tortured earth.
Something else lived in those depths. The rubescent smear woke, glittering balefully, and above it lingered two pale gleams almost suffocated by a hatred so massive, so twisted, even glimpsing it threatened to strike me from the sky—
“Solveig.” A hand upon my throat, massaging. “Drink, my weirdling. There.”
The liquid was cold, yet burned at the same time. I coughed, choked, and blinked blearily at Arn’s face, seen through a haze. I could not feel my hands or feet, and was forced to keep swallowing or drown in whatever she was pouring through my unresisting mouth.
Yet I made no demur, rammed back into my physical self and glad of the event. It takes much effort to fly forth in such fashion but hardly any to return; the ship of any invisible self longs to moor itself to the body once more.
The drink did not taste of Elder vintage, but rough mortal alcohol without the body of ale or the healthful tang of mead. When she took the container away, my eyes welled with hot saltwater. “Ugh,” I managed, feebly. “Have we halted?”
“Only for a few moments.” Her eyelashes were white, and frost lingered upon her hair as well as her shoulders. Despite that, she looked relieved, though her woad-stripe cracked, flakes falling free. “Asleep on your feet like a horse. We have only the liquor from the pale things left; the Elder did summat to render it less harmful. Come, take a step or two.”
“The worst is past.” Aeredh’s arm was still over my shoulders. I barely felt his warmth; the entire world was ice. “Dawn comes, and we are almost to Redhill.”
It meant nothing to me. “T-towers,” I managed. Arn’s attention sharpened. “Made of iron, and inside it a red thing. It knows, Arneior.” Seidhr gripped me; the unbidden vision had to be spoken, lest its memory slip away. “No. Not it.” My hand flew up, gripped a fold of her mantle’s front. “He. He knows I am here. North, amid the ash.”
“What does she say?” Daerith the harpist swam into view over my shieldmaid’s shoulder. My head tipped back, and it was a relief to see a few stars glimmering cleanly between snow-laden branches.
Even if unfamiliar, they were still real, and whole, and good.
The forest was grey—Aeredh was correct, dawn approached. The entire world was hushed as if immured in the Unmaking, that great void broken by Allmother’s first song. She is at once ever-singing and music itself, but even the greatest seidhr has a beginning, vast ongoing notes which brought the world into being and kindled secret fires in the depths where nothing had existed before.
The wise say that music has always been, and will always be.
“It is as we feared.” Aeredh’s breath touched my ear, hot as a brand. The Elder’s fingertips scorched my cold forehead. I had rarely been this close to man not of my kin before, and was too frozen to feel anything at the event. He made a swift motion, and I thought for a moment I was flying again—but no, he had simply bent to place my arm over his shoulders, and his own left arm slipped about my waist, holding me indecently close. “Come, as quickly as we may. How fares Eol?”
“Well enough, Efain says, though only half-conscious.” Arneior thrust the stopper into the skin-mouth, and eyed the Elder balefully. “Neither of them will last much longer in this weather. We must find shelter.”
“And so we shall.” Aeredh set off again, carrying most of my weight despite my twitching attempts to help.
I wished I could walk unaided, for even a few steps. To be still in deepfreeze winter is to court death; the blood stops moving and lethargy grips the entire body.
I had to make them listen. “He knows.” I forced the words through a burning throat, through numb lips. “He knows I am here, he knows.”
Aeredh froze, his stillness that of a hunting creature sensing it has been seen. So did every Elder, and a blade rang from its sheath—Efain’s, I thought, for he was the one who spoke.
“I can smell you, idiot,” the Northerner said in the Old Tongue. “Come out.”
The next voice was a surprise—a man’s, deep and resonant, and very amused. “And I heard your approach since before moonrise. What brings a king and his wolves to Redhill, my lords?”
We had been found, and—for once during that terrible journey—not by a foe.
PART THREE
REDHILL TO THE WILD
Laden with Discoveries
He was not born curst, but the Enemy hated his family above all other Secondborn. And over and over, the young lord paid the price.
—Reikat Halfhand, The Third Saga of Hajithe’s Son
Karat Vaerkil—literally, “the blood-colored hill”—protected a large swathe of Dorael’s southeastron border in those days; a column of solid rock rose, stony and mostly sheer, to a great height. Whoever held its windswept tower could see far in every direction, and wherever one trod in those lands, its stony crown was easily visible. It was honeycombed with smooth-carved passages, and hidden ways radiated veinlike from it as well, for the hill had been delved by those most cunning.
A clutch of spiny, ice-freighted bushes protected a scattered tumble of boulders; deep in the pile’s heart was a crack wide enough for a man to slip through. Inside, the dimness was uncomfortably akin to the passageway out of quaking, riven Nithraen, and it was warmer though my breath still turned into a thin cloud. Bands of different rock in the tunnel’s walls glowed enough to give faint illumination more than enough for Elder eyes, yet I shuddered at the return of darkness.
I was not even embarrassed at being carried between Aeredh and another Elder whose name I did not know. Even my shieldmaid accepted Daerith’s aid in the final stretch, leaning upon his arm, her silence of the peculiar type meaning she kept herself from foul language only by a supreme effort of will.
Less than an hour after we were hailed by a voice from a thorn-brake, firelight painted the walls of a half-timbered, half-stone room, and we were made welcome with deep brown ale and dense, sweet waybread of a type Arn and I had not tasted before. There was also Elder winterwine from a great cask, and the lord of the hill himself brought a wooden cup to Aeredh.
The garrison here was Northerners, clad in black cloth and oddments. A few were people of Lady Hajithe’s hall, though most hailed from other quarters, and the man who held Redhill—for in spring to autumn the rocky prominence was covered in a plant which dyed it ruddy, especially at sunset—was accorded all the honor of a steading-lord. But ’twas not he nor any other Secondborn who had wrought its tunnels.
Our mantles and undermantles were taken, Arn and I wrapped in rough woolen blankets and placed near the fire, and every hospitality possible pressed upon us. I sat and shivered in great waves, my body accepting the warmth only fitfully, and Eol, his rent armor stripped free, was laid upon a hurriedly cleared table. He was more wounded than he had appeared; I had failed in a volva’s duty once more, for I should have tended him despite his reluctance.
Yet now I saw a fresh wonder, for a small figure bustled about the table, sometimes standing upon blocks placed just so, giving access to its height. He looked almost childlike, but his proportions were fully adult and he had a dark, well-braided beard only lightly touched by grey. Even Flokin my father’s oldest warrior might envy said beard, for it reached his knees.
“Quite interesting,” the small man said in crisply accented Old Tongue, peeling aside a piece of rent black shirt and peering beneath; his gaze was odd, for his eyes held flecks of gold like sparkling rivermud from an ore-rich hill. “I have not seen these burns before.”
I realized what he must be. “A thrayn dverger?” I said blankly though chattering teeth, and the fire spark-crackled in reply.
“Indeed.” The man who had greeted us was tall and somber, his dark hair indifferently cut and his clothing rough black. His armor was blackened as well, ring-and-scale very much like Arn’s except in its heaviness. For all that, the sword upon his back was of Elder make and his boots, though worn, of high quality. His entire air was of tight restraint; his nose was proud, and his features echoed Lady Hajithe’s.
Indeed they should, for he was her son Tarit.
In his dark eyes and tight mouth lurked something very familiar as well, a cousin to Bjorn’s temper or my father’s battle-madness. In spite of his size—he was tall as Aeredh—and the brace of daggers at his hips as well as the shortbow strapped for easy use, not to mention his mail and the lightness of his step, I felt a curious comfort.
This was a manner of fellow I knew quite well how to handle.
“This is Mehem son of Dísara of the line of Ivaldi,” the hill’s lord continued in thickly accented southron, indicating the dverger, who snorted and bent to his work, spreading some manner of paste from a shallow wooden bowl onto Eol’s burns. “Redhill is his home, and we but guests. I am Tarit son of Taliurin, and any friend of Aeredh’s or Eol’s is most welcome wherever I lodge.” His gaze lingered upon my bruised face, but he did not ask how I had suffered the wound.
“Guests.” Mehem poked somewhat ungently at Eol’s side, and the Northern captain, only half-conscious, did not even twitch. The dverger’s handling of my language was very precise as well, each syllable clear and sharp. “Is that what it is called?”
Arn stretched her legs as far as they would go, drinking deep from a wooden goblet. Her eyes were half-lidded; I had rarely seen her so weary. My own exhaustion had passed the point of rest; I could barely believe we had gained any shelter at all. Aeredh poured another measure of winterwine from the tapped cask and drank deeply, his ear-tips all but twitching. The harpist and other Elder attended to their own business after our journey, and while most of the Northerners followed suit Efain and Soren hovered near their captain instead, watching the dverger work with narrow-eyed, intense interest. Eol breathed shallowly, submitting to the small man’s ministrations as he would not to mine.
“We can leave you and this place to the Enemy’s mercy, Mehem my friend, if this is indeed your wish.” Tarit did not shrug, but he also did not glance at the dverger. “I am surprised to see you here, my lord Aeredh. How fared you in the South?”
Aeredh broke his steady consumption of winterwine, drawing a deep breath instead. His blue gaze held renewed fire, and his shoulders relaxed. “We did not find what we sought, but something far more precious.” He indicated Arn and me with a brief, economical motion. “Lady Solveig and her shieldmaid Arneior are in our care; we visited your mother not so long ago. She sent tidings and gifts with us, but sadly the latter lie now in Nithraen’s ruin.”
“Ruin? That is heavy tidings indeed. I would ask—” Tarit glanced at a carved stone doorway; motion within it was one of his men, peering at the new arrivals. “Kaedris. What news?”
“Orukhar and lich.” The man, bearded and broad-shouldered, lingered in the doorway. Despite his rough cloth he was too well-bred to express curiosity at our presence, though it shone in his gaze and he glanced often in my and Arn’s direction. “Some other foul things, too, no doubt tracking our new guests. Shall we harry the filth, or simply watch?”
“How many?” The lord of Redhill was abrupt, true—but he was also fey in battle, and no few of the Enemy’s servants had met their end at his blade or bow.
He was like his father in that respect, and consequently had earned the hatred not only of the thralls but of their master too.
“Two war-bands, a score each.” The bearded man’s gaze flickered toward me again, cut away to settle upon his commander. His hand rested easily upon a sword that had to be of Elder make; the plain metal hilt’s curve was too lovely to be aught else. “A larger group just at the edge, aiming south for the Cleft. As far as we can tell Dorael’s Cloak still holds, but…”
The lord of Redhill had heard enough, and his tone was now very like Lady Hajithe’s. “Make certain all our men are accounted for, then close every entrance. Some misfortune has befallen Nithraen, and until I know its tale I will not risk any of our number. Have Gerell and Flokis strengthen the watch, and ready a safe room for our gentler visitors.”
