“I mean … I can feel the Might, but I can’t reach it.”
The lie left a bitter taste on her tongue, making it feel swollen, like it had been stung by a bee. Silence hung between them for a moment.
“I know it can be painful,” he said. “Some people think binding should hurt. Is that why?”
“Yes,” she said. What else could she say?
Rime got up again. Hirka looked up, squinting at his silhouette.
“The Might doesn’t hurt.”
Hirka flushed in embarrassment. She heard him walk away. His footsteps fading as he headed down the mountain. He’d tricked her. It wasn’t fair! She tried to feel angry about it, but it was all too much effort. After all, she was the one who had lied. What was going to happen now? Would he work out what she was?
Fragments of an old folk song came back to her. About a girl who had taken an embling as a lover. The song had many verses in which the tailless creature begged her to sleep with him, but the girl said no every time. Until the final verse, when she gave in and said yes. She rotted in the forest like a tree stump. Hollow. Unrecognizable.
It’s just a horrible song.
But nothing was just anything anymore. Hirka had seen enough sickness in her life that it was all too easy to imagine the rot. For the first time, she realized the enormity of what she was. What it took from her. Something she’d never had, but still it hurt. She brought her hand to her chest, felt the wolf tooth against her palm. A lie she’d grown up with. She let go.
Her fingers dug down into the earth. The earth that hated her. That shut her out. She tore up a fistful of topsoil and flung it at the castle wall.
“If you don’t want me, I don’t want you either! You hear me?!”
Kuro landed on the ground in front of her. He came closer and rested his beak on her thigh.
“Kooor,” he said.
“Yeah, great. That solves all my problems,” she replied sarcastically, plunging her fingers into the earth again.
“Kooor.”
But she didn’t know ravenspeak, so it didn’t matter.
UNEARTHED
She’s unearthed!
Rime hopped off the edge of the cliff and used the Might to ease himself down from the top of the mountain. He was now strong enough to manage a drop the height of five men, and he was getting better by the day. Enveloped by the Might, it was as though the ground was trying to repel him as he landed. Like the air was syrup. It had cost him several broken bones to get to this point. But he had to get better. He had to make his master proud. Svarteld was the most powerful binder Rime had met. He’d seen Svarteld cross a lake without getting his feet wet. He owed no debt to the ravens, as people used to say.
But the same couldn’t be said for Hirka.
She’d lied to him. She was unearthed. He’d never heard anything like it. Children could be unearthed, and he’d heard that extremely old people could lose the Might. People who had lost their wits, maybe. But normal people …
Hirka had given Rime three years of freedom. Three years of breakneck challenges. Precious time for him. Games for her. She’d always been something of a puzzle to him, but this was something else entirely. Had they really never discussed binding in those three years?
No. Why would they have? Rime had grown up with the Might. It was the affliction that made him who he was. He realized now that she had avoided the topic as avidly as he had. Rime felt vaguely disappointed that he hadn’t noticed that something was wrong earlier.
He’d always been alert to nuances. To pretense. A blessed child who uncovered truths in words exchanged between people in the corridors. Words that were never spoken. Looks. Quiet displays of power. The game that ruled an entire world. Books in the library he knew he wasn’t allowed to read. His grandmother’s mysterious scriptorium, letters sent by raven that could be read if you held them up to an oil lamp or a candle. He was too young to understand much of what he learned back then. Rime glanced back up at Vargtind. He might still be too young to understand a lot of it.
He took a detour around the village. The sun was low in the sky and the trees cast dark shadows across the road leading to the house. He was going to miss this house. Here he didn’t get lost in the rooms. They were made for people, not for giants. He had been born and raised in the house in Mannfalla, but it had never been a home. The distance between the walls was just too vast. It was magnificent, and he could appreciate it for its beauty, for its history. But the house in Elveroa felt like a home.
There was only one other place in the world where he felt like that. There were no palaces there, just trees and open space among the mountains. No furniture, except for a few benches and cushions. And there—together with Svarteld and the others—he would remain, putting the rest of his life behind him.
Rime walked through the entrance. It was twilight. An oil lamp on the floor illuminated Oda, who was standing on a stool, dusting the paintings. Half of them were leaning up against the wall, wrapped in linen. Ready for the journey home. Oda bowed and smiled at him.
“Són-Rime. Out before the sun rises and back when it’s set?”
Rime returned her smile and avoided commenting on her use of his title. Ilume left no doubt whatsoever as to how the servants should address him. He would just make life difficult for them if he objected.
“Is that bread I smell?” He realized he was hungry.
Oda started to climb down, but Rime stopped her.
“No, no. I’ll get it myself,” he said.
He walked down to the kitchen and ate a warm slice of bread while he thought about what he was going to say. He wanted to know why Hirka couldn’t bind. He’d never heard or read of anyone who couldn’t even feel the flow of energy in the earth. Of life. Through the ages, many artists had shouted about having lost the Might. It was said that Frang, the children’s portrait artist from Ormanadas, had thrown himself from the wall in Eisvaldr more than two hundred years ago because the Might abandoned him. Rime didn’t buy it. Artistic temperament. Drama. Too much wine, maybe. But mightless? No.
Rime let the Might fill his body for a moment, as though to make sure that he still could. The world had to seem so empty to someone who couldn’t experience this feeling. So meaningless. A world without any life force. Without the Seer.
He washed the bread down with apple juice and went back up to the scriptorium. The room was bare now. Furniture and rugs were already on the way back to the family home in Mannfalla. Only the desk remained, a dark, oaken colossus, where Ilume sat bent over a letter.
Behind her, the sunlight pierced the image in the stained-glass window: a picture of the Seer flying above outstretched hands. Dappled brown light danced on Ilume’s white robe, almost making it look dirty. But Rime knew that as soon as she stood, she would be clean again. That’s how it was with Ilume, with the Council. They met, they decided people’s fates on a daily basis, then washed their hands in the huge silver basins after every meeting. Always clean. Would she emerge from this clean as well?
Ilume’s service in Elveroa had come to an abrupt end after six years of negotiations, or at least that’s what the Council called them. Six years of trying to persuade Ravnhov to see sense. All these years in Elveroa, and now Ravnhov was banging its shields. Whispering about the blind and blaming the Council. The situation was fragile. So fragile Ilume had been summoned home.
Rime realized that Ilume’s opponents would accuse her of having failed, because still Ravnhov was not a part of Mannfalla.
Rime took a step into the room. His grandmother looked up at him. He waited the brief moment he knew it would take her to accept a conversation. Ilume set her pen down in an ivory dish and sat up in the chair, folding her hands. Maybe this was going to be easier than he had thought. After the night at Glimmeråsen, Ilume’s open hostility had given way to a frightening indifference. She was planning something.
Rime searched for the best way to introduce the topic. He knew Ilume loved to lecture him on who he was. Tha
t was the surest way to get an answer.
“How strong was my mother in the Might?”
“Not as strong as you.”
Rime seized the thread. “How do you know how strong someone is?”
Ilume looked at him. “Those who want to know, know. You know.”
“Is everyone born that way?”
“That way?”
He started to walk around in the room. He ran his hand along the shelves of the empty book cabinet that was going to remain here. It was free of dust. The words were gone. He tried to find his own words. Hirka had lied to him, but he knew something about her that presumably nobody else knew. Something he was certain he shouldn’t expose.
“Is everyone able to feel the flow of the Might through the earth the same as everyone else, I mean. Is everyone the same?”
“Obviously not. Each family has their own share of the Might, some have more than others.”
Rime was well aware of that, but he let her continue.
“You couldn’t have become a servant of the Seer if you didn’t have the blood for it, Rime.”
“But who has the strongest blood?”
Ilume laughed. Rime eyed her wrinkles. They were almost never visible, only when she laughed. He wished she would laugh more often.
“If you asked Family Taid, they would reply, ‘Us!’ And if you asked Family Jakinnin, they would say exactly the same thing.”
Rime was growing impatient. He wasn’t getting anywhere. “Does anyone ever show up who is a lot stronger or … weaker … than others?”
Ilume’s smile withered and she raised a thin eyebrow at him. “Have you met someone who is stronger than you?”
He hadn’t, so it wasn’t difficult to meet the gaze of the old woman. “No.”
She held his gaze.
“Perhaps some of those chosen during the Rite will be,” he tried.
Ilume sighed and laid her hands on the armrests. “The Rite is not what it once was. Few have the same connection with the earth that everyone used to. The Might is thinning. Ebb and flow will soon be the same. Trickling brooks that dry up over the years.” Ilume spoke almost gently, gazing out the window. “Who knows how eternal the Might is? Who knows if it has always been there or simply runs through us in order to dissipate? Is it precious and rare, or eternal in abundance? Have we drunk too much, or will there always be something left in the glass? Should we choose incorrectly, we deprive the world.” She looked back at Rime.
“But someone must lead us forward,” she said, and her gentleness was gone.
Rime felt an unease in his body. “Is the Seer punishing us?”
“We’re punishing ourselves.” Ilume looked out at the empty room. Her eyelids grew heavy. Outside, the last light faded. The colors died and his grandmother’s silhouette was swathed by the twilight.
“Grandmother?”
Ilume rose suddenly and rolled up her papers. “You can only call me that when you show some remorse. When you understand your place, and pull the knife out of my back. Then you can call me family. Do you feel remorse?”
“Of course not. I’m serving the Seer.”
Rime wasn’t going to get a straight answer out of her. As Ilume said, he was no longer family. The Council and the fate of the people were not his concern. Ilume was welcome to her secrets. Rime had no desire to know.
But when you were as close to the Council as he had been his entire life, it was frustrating to see them fumbling in the dark. He knew that he shouldn’t say it, but he said it anyway. “We all do our part. I fight for the Seer. And I’ll do what I can if we’re threatened.”
Ilume stopped rustling her papers and silence seized the room. She looked like she was going to say something, but then changed her mind. Instead, she continued, “If we’re ever threatened, that is your job. To serve blindly. Without knowing or questioning.”
Rime caught her almost inaudible stress on the final word. He nodded and left the room. She had nearly allowed herself to be tricked into asking how he could know that Ym was threatened.
Rime suddenly felt old. Only a few years ago he would have been beside himself with satisfaction at being able to surprise Ilume An-Elderin. He was eighteen winters. She was three-quarters of a century, and she was a member of Insringin, the Council’s inner circle, and he had gotten her to share information involuntarily. But tonight that just made him uneasy.
He went to sit down in the library, but there were no chairs to sit on. Or books to read. Empty rooms. There was a knock downstairs, and he heard Oda open the door. Ramoja’s voice. And Vetle’s. He heard them come up the stairs and saw her hurry past the door to the library with Vetle in tow.
“Ramoja?”
She poked her head in. Her cheeks were red. “Rime. Can you …?” She lightly nudged Vetle toward him.
“Of course.”
He waved Vetle over and Ramoja went in to see Ilume. Obviously, there was an urgent matter. Everything was urgent at the moment. And when something was urgent, you could count on Ilume. Ramoja had counted on Ilume ever since Rime’s mother had died.
Vetle sat down on the floor and Rime sat down with him. The boy was playing with a stone figure. A girl. She was beautifully detailed, but the tail was broken off. Rime thought of Hirka and smiled. Hirka Has-No-Tail, as Kolgrim used to call her.
Hirka Has-No-Tail, who couldn’t bind.
Rime felt the hairs on his arms stand on end.
THE CONFESSION
Hirka couldn’t bring herself to move. Rime had left Vargtind ages ago, but she could still hear his voice.
The Might doesn’t hurt.
Rime An-Elderin, Són-Rime. Direct descendent of the twelve. He might have been working it out at that very moment.
Kuro hopped to and fro, trying to get her attention, but he soon got bored and flew off. Darkness descended on Vargtind. The sun had set. She was getting cold.
Hirka got up and walked over to the edge of the ruins encircling the flat hilltop. Some of the stones were several times taller than she was. They thrust themselves skyward as if they thought they might be able to tear a hole in the heavens. The wind whipped at her, trying to lure her over the edge. But Hirka wasn’t afraid of the edge. Or heights. She was dizzy, but for a different reason.
She was dizzy because she knew she was all alone.
A child of Odin, from a different world, who couldn’t bind. Father couldn’t help her anymore. He had kept her safe for as long as he could.
And now she had driven away the only person who might have been able to help her. Hirka wrapped her arms around herself. She should have brought her cloak. Father was right. Sometimes she couldn’t see farther than the end of her nose. She had to learn to think ahead. But there was only one thing in her future.
The Rite.
For a while, she’d even had herself convinced. Convinced she could learn, be like everyone else and go through the Rite unnoticed. She’d been wrong. Father had known all along that would never happen. They had to leave, and there was nothing Hirka could do. They were destined to live a life without rest, traveling from place to place.
Hirka felt a longing she hadn’t expected. They’d lived that way most of her childhood. It wasn’t that bad, was it? Living like the ravens in the forest. Like a wild animal, with only itself to rely on. It could be a good life.
But it wasn’t fair. She was tired of hiding. Of always moving on to the next place. Of never having anyone besides Father. There had to be another way.
Hirka started down the mountainside. The sky was a deep blue and the stars were already out. She saw light out of the corner of her eye. The torches were lit down by the quay. She could see people carrying boxes to and fro. Another merchant ship with goods from Kleiv, or perhaps from Kaupe. Hirka walked through Elveroa and down toward the quay. The stalls that were usually so busy were closed for the night. The counters had been folded up and the goods locked in. Hirka could hear voices on the quayside, and so she stopped; an instinct as old as she was. Wh
y did she feel the need to avoid people? And the more there were, the worse it was. As if something horrific might happen if they saw her. What did she think they’d do? See her for what she was and burn her alive?
She walked on. The ship rocked in its mooring as if sleeping through the loading and unloading. Several men climbed the masts, lashing the sails into place. Strong men carried sacks and wooden chests past Hirka and into the storehouse she’d once fallen through the roof of. She made sure to keep out of the way.
People crowded together on the pretense of helping out, but most of them were only really interested in gossip and news. Sylja’s mother stood talking to one of the men. She was counting out silver pieces for him, but she didn’t look happy. She never did when she was parting with money.
“Hirka!” Sylja hissed nearby. “Over here!” Sylja grabbed her and pulled her behind the closest storehouse.
“What are you d—”
“Shh!” Sylja peered around the corner before throwing herself back against the wall again. “Mother will never let me stay if she sees you!” Sylja looked at her and unleashed the smile that made all of Elveroa think she was marvelous. “Orm’s here!”
Hirka couldn’t help but smile back. “Wine Orm? Are you sure?”
“Yes!”
Sylja looked around the corner again before turning back with a satisfied grin. Her mother was gone. They left their hiding place and walked past the torches. Hirka felt the warmth creep back into her body. A couple of men asked why they weren’t in bed, following the question up with self-congratulatory guffaws. One of them shouted something about the length of his tail. Sylja stared at him, pretending to be shocked.
“That’s not what I’ve heard,” Hirka replied without looking at them.
Hirka spotted Orm and they headed his way, doing their best to look nonchalant. He had two sacks balanced on his head. This would have been difficult for a normal man, but Orm had no neck. His head just went straight into his shoulders. He was as broad as two men. His shirt had probably been white once, but it now looked yellow. Hirka hoped it was just the light from the torches.
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