He had told Ilume he wanted to see everyone again. Vetle, Sylja, Hirka. He’d lingered on Hirka’s name to test Ilume’s reaction. To see whether she knew Hirka was in Ravnhov. After all, Launhug had submitted a report detailing his failure, and Ilume might also have thought of Hirka when she heard about the red-haired girl on the roof.
Ilume had refused. What did they need more guardsmen for? They had enough people for that. His services wouldn’t be required. And if he just wanted to see his old acquaintances again, he really had made the wrong choice. Kolkagga didn’t exist. Kolkagga were already dead.
That was when she had sent him reeling. Ilume had continued to flick through her letters as she said: “Ramoja sent a raven. The Hovel burned to the ground the day we left. The girl’s probably dead. I forgot to mention it.”
He had been staggered by her indifference, rendered speechless. She had glanced up and given him an inquisitive look. “What? Was it important?” Rime had left the room to stop himself from doing something he would later regret.
Svarteld lowered his sword again. He shook his head and headed for the door. Rime followed him outside, ready for the inevitable punishment.
“You were in Mannfalla today.” Svarteld could even make questions sound like commands.
“Eisvaldr, master. Visiting Ilume.”
“Ah,” Svarteld said, as if that explained everything. Rime could see the shadow of a smile on his face. They looked out at the mountains. There was a sheer drop only a couple steps farther. Beneath them, crows sailed between the sprawling peaks, bobbing in and out of the fog in an attempt to organize themselves for the evening. The sweat in Rime’s hair dried in the wind.
“You were her last hope,” Svarteld said without looking at him.
Rime swallowed, unsure what to do with the sudden intimacy that statement created. “Master, the An-Elderin family is bigger than me and Ilume.”
Svarteld chuckled. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Rime, his arms folded across his chest. “Your mother is dead. Her brother, Tuve, is lost. Only your father’s brother, Dankan, is still alive. He might live under Ilume’s roof, but Neilin keeps his balls in a dish on her bedside table. Their firstborn died. Their youngest is often sick and Illunde is illegitimate. Apart from that, all you’ve got is the usual assortment of parasites with negligible blood ties to the family.”
Rime was taken aback. He’d never heard anyone apart from Ilume talk about their family that way. It was an ice-cold summary that would have gotten anyone else burned on the walls. But every word was true, and the master wasn’t finished.
“You’re the one who inherited the blue blood. You’re the one who has the Might. It came to you through Gesa. It came to Gesa through Ilume. It came to Ilume through Storm.”
It came to Storm through Yng. It came to Yng through …
Rime could continue down the family line for a thousand years. To the first Elderin. He’d learned to do that before he’d learned to read or write. He knew it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the master had such knowledge. He was Kolkagga’s leader. He’d been the long arm of the Seer and the Council for longer than Rime had been alive.
“She almost lost you when you were born. She almost lost you when you were six. Now you’re eighteen and she’s lost you forever.”
The master’s words gave him chills. Images came to him unbidden. Ice. Cold fingers. Heavy snow. They were only flashes, but a memory all the same. He had been dug out of the snow and survived. His parents hadn’t been so lucky. He felt a kind of detached grief over it—more like he was remembering a time of grief than actually grieving for something he remembered. It was what it was. As it had always been. Ilume had lost her daughter, Gesa, along with Gesa’s husband. But she had managed to hold onto Rime. Until now.
The master started along the paved path along the edge of the cliff. Rime followed him until they reached the outskirts of the camp. Kolkagga had several camps spread around Blindból, but this was the biggest and the closest to Mannfalla. Together they comprised the Council’s invisible network of assassins, controlling the entire mountain region between Mannfalla and Ravnhov. Stories about bloody encounters between Kolkagga and warriors from the northlands were rife, but Rime had never run into anyone while out on a mission.
Svarteld and Rime stopped on the path and looked down at Kolkagga getting ready for the evening. Hundreds of torches had already been lit. They were fixed to poles in front of the cabins, low wooden buildings shared by a minimum of four men. They each had their own room and shared a hearth in the middle of the building. Apart from that, Kolkagga had next to nothing. They slept on straw mats on the floor with their black outfits rolled up as pillows. They had weapons, woollen blankets, and little else.
Out here you had to rely on yourself and your own knowledge. You only had what you needed to survive. The An-Elderin family home—the sleeping dragon—was the polar opposite. Before becoming Kolkagga, Rime had never gone hungry and never known real pain. He had never wanted for anything. Yet still he’d had nothing.
Svarteld looked at Rime. “You swore the Oath,” he said. Rime was momentarily confused until he remembered what they had been talking about. Ilume and how he’d been her only hope, her intended successor. It suddenly occurred to Rime that the reason his master was so hard on him might be different than what he had thought. He really had done his best to make Rime give up before he swore the Oath, to send him back to Eisvaldr with his tail between his legs. Why?
Because if anything were to happen to Rime An-Elderin, Kolkagga would have to pay the price. They would have to face Ilume’s fury. Svarteld would rather have Rime on the Council than see him die in Blindból.
But he could have refused to let Rime swear the Oath. He could always have found a reason. It would undoubtedly have made life easier for him, yet the master had accepted him, nevertheless.
Rime felt a new warmth blossom in his chest. He meant something to Svarteld. Something worth the problems that might come later. It was as if he had seen straight into the master’s heart for a brief moment. It made him feel braver. Perhaps he could find a solution to the problem he’d been trying to solve all day. He’d made Hirka a promise, and he would keep it. He would make sure he was on duty on her Rite day, and Ilume would never find out about it.
“Master, I need a favor.”
If Svarteld was surprised, he hid it well. He pointed back toward the training hall.
“Clean your blood off the floor. Then we’ll talk.”
MANNFALLA
The conversations in the cart were colored by the landscape. Through the spruce forests, Ramoja was bold, talking about things nobody was supposed to hear. About how you can’t always choose and how your path can seem predetermined. How you wake up one day and wonder where you were when the choice had been made. Like missing a trial and receiving your sentence at the door. The more she went on, the clearer it became that she felt the need to downplay her role in the festering conflict between Ravnhov and Mannfalla.
Hirka heard Father whisper from Slokna, Idiots choose sides. Be on your own side and you’ll live longer.
As they came down from Hrafnfell, the spruce forest thinned and gave way to the occasional birch. Hirka and Ramoja grew more guarded, chose their words more carefully, almost as if trying to draw a veil over everything that had been said. Hirka had said as little as possible, keeping her mouth shut and smiling mysteriously whenever the conversation turned to the Might.
Ramoja believed the Might was strong in Hirka, and that she didn’t want to use it to serve the Council. She believed that Hirka was a blue blood who could bind the dragon forth, as had been said since ancient times. Making Hirka a pawn in a far bigger game. A fantasy. What would the ravener have said if she knew how insignificant Hirka really was? Unearthed and mightless. An outsider. What would Eirik and Tein have said? Tein, whom she hadn’t seen since his father had been attacked. She had expected him to storm into the room while she was working to bring down Eirik’s fev
er, but she had remained alone at the chieftain’s bedside. She hadn’t asked about him either.
In the lowlands, people were starting to bring in the harvest, perhaps earlier than usual since the Rite had been brought forward by nearly an entire month. Nobody looked worried. They just worked as they’d always done. Children chased birds or picked up the grain their parents had dropped. A couple of them pulled at each other’s tails. Hirka looked at them longingly. What if she just jumped off the cart? She could find a family. Work, eat, and turn in with them, in a house so full of people that it blocked everything else out. But the moment passed and on they rolled, without anyone giving them so much as a second glance.
The weather grew worse after a couple of days. The open countryside of Midtyms lay between Tyrimfjella in the east and Blindból in the west. The wind came in fierce gusts and swept dust from the road over them. They wrapped scarves around their faces or sat inside the cart with the ravens, which grew more irritable with every day they spent cooped up in the small cages.
They started encountering more and more people on the road. People who had seen the army inching its way northward. People resting around road markers. The Seer protected travelers, and His mark could be seen everywhere. People also put up their own. They passed a farm where a pair of antlers that had been painted black hung on the gate. Someone had covered the antlers with thin leather strips to make them look like the Seer’s protective wings. They fluttered bleakly in the wind. It looked more like a starving raven had flown into the gate and died.
Hirka grew more and more uneasy. She tried to hide it by taking on small tasks: word games with Vetle, looking after the ravens, sweeping sand out of the cart. Nothing helped.
Rime haunted her thoughts. He was going to be there. He was going to help. Was he not An-Elderin? The Seer’s favorite? That had to count for something. At night she prayed quietly that the Seer would prove worthy of the faith Rime had in Him. That He would be a wise, merciful, and loving Seer. The one who had saved them from the blind. The one who protected those who could not protect themselves.
Crones’ talk, Father whispered from Slokna.
They reached a village so big that Hirka thought they had reached their destination. So this was Mannfalla? Big, but not as bad as she’d expected. She almost felt relieved—until Ramoja cleared up the misunderstanding. This was just one of many villages located around the actual city.
“You’ll see Mannfalla when we get over that ridge,” Ramoja said and pointed.
The cart climbed upward until the houses gave way to hilly terrain and tea plants. A couple of older women with wrinkled brows walked between the orderly rows of green, making notes in small books. They touched the plants, smelled them, and walked on.
The terrain leveled out toward the top of the ridge, and suddenly enormous camps appeared. Tents, carts, horses, and campfires. Some families had hunkered down under the open sky without any kind of shelter. Ramoja looked almost stunned. “There are more than ever.”
“Do they live here? Who are they?” Hirka asked, climbing over the back of the bench to sit next to Ramoja.
Ramoja shrugged. “People. Families whose children have to go through the Rite. There isn’t enough room for everyone in the city, and not everyone can afford to stay there. There’s always a lot, but this …”
Hirka remembered hearing some men, reeking of ale, talking at the feast in Ravnhov. Rumors of the blind. Mannfalla’s warriors heading north. War and superstition driving more and more people to the capital.
Ramoja urged the horses on, past roadside peddlers selling jewelry depicting the Seer. Guardsmen dressed in white and brown were directing people away from the roads and handing out what Hirka thought was food, but what Ramoja said was soap. It was the most important protection Mannfalla had against illness when the city was overcrowded. Hirka remembered Father’s story about the woman she had thought was her mother.
Maiande was a girl in Ulvheim who I … knew for a while. She made soaps and knew to sell them to weak men at the taverns. They spent more on soaps than on ale. You’d have struggled to find cleaner drunkards.
Hirka forgot her fear for a moment and held her hand out to one of the guardsmen. He gave her a piece of soap without stopping or deigning to look at her. It looked like a flattened egg in her hand. The mark of the Council was stamped into the bottom. It was hard to tell whether it was to remind them of who was behind the good deed or to boost its cleansing power.
The cart rolled over the hillcrest and Mannfalla appeared below them, an incredible sight that left no doubt in Hirka’s mind that they had finally arrived. She stood up and held onto the roof of the cart so as not to fall. Everything she had heard about Mannfalla was true. The city could have housed half the world. Houses of all imaginable shapes and colors were stacked on top of one another, in some places organized in streets, in other places more haphazardly, as if by a landslide. The buildings formed a horseshoe around the Ora, which was dotted with ships and narrow boats that didn’t seem to do anything other than sail back and forth between the riverbanks. Gray spires poked up all over the city.
“This is nuts,” Hirka said, sinking back down onto the seat.
“Nuts!” Vetle echoed.
“What’s that over there? Out on the river?” Hirka pointed at a group of houses that appeared to be floating in the middle of the river. A maze of jetties jutted out in every direction. It was like looking at a giant crow’s nest.
“It’s a fishing camp. In a month the redfins will start swimming upstream, and then they’ll be busy.” Ramoja nodded at the fishing camp. “The fishermen sleep and eat out there, or at least they try to.”
“Don’t they live in the city?”
“Yes, but they’re afraid of missing shoals of fish, so they prefer not to go ashore. It’s good food and good money.”
The road sloped down toward the city, and the camps disappeared behind them. They rounded a small hill and the whole city came into view, twice as big as it had first appeared. And now Hirka could see the wall.
Her eyes widened. She’d heard the stories. She knew it was meant to be tall, but she’d thought tall as in the walls of the Alldjup. Not tall as in Vargtind. The legendary white wall that divided Mannfalla in two stood like a luminous bridge, barring the mountain pass leading into Blindból. On the outside lay the city in all its motley glory. On the inside lay Eisvaldr, the home of the Seer. A city in its own right, almost as large as the one outside. On the inside everything was white, apart from a couple of red roofs and domes. The largest of them was shiny and gleamed in the sun.
“Eisvaldr,” Ramoja said.
“All of that?” Hirka asked, trying to stifle her horror. The cart continued stolidly onward.
“All of that. Eisvaldr is a city at the end of the city. A thousand years ago, it was just the wall against Blindból. Then the home of the Seer was built inside. Then came the Rite Hall, the Council’s headquarters. Eisvaldr grew and grew. Today all of the Council families have their houses inside the walls.” Ramoja gave a crooked smile. “Every time I come here, the houses are a little bigger, the gardens a little nicer, and the embellishments a little more lavish. They stopped being homes a long time ago.”
“What do you mean? Does nobody live there?”
“Oh, yes. Several councillors have practically their entire family under one roof. But the house’s primary function is to impress other families.”
Hirka shrugged. “So a bit like everywhere else.”
Ramoja smiled and looked at her. “True. Here there’s just more to choose from.”
They came down to the western city gate, which was almost hidden behind all the various stalls. People shouted, pointed, and quarreled. They held up pots, clothes, and decorative items of iron, brass, silver, and gold. There was screeching from cages and squealing from pens. Ducks, geese, chickens, and sheep. Black pigs and goats with decorations on their horns.
Guardsmen patrolled atop the city wall. Hirka stared at t
he ground to hide her face, but they weren’t stopping anyone. They had enough to do just keeping peddlers and animals off the road.
Their cart rolled through the gate, a huge arch of dark wood that probably hadn’t been closed for hundreds of years. Other carts creaked through in a steady stream. Inside the walls, the streets were wide but teeming with life. A smoky, charred smell came from the stalls selling food right on the street. People bought roasted nuts, stews, and grilled pieces of redfish spiced with seeds that they ate from cones while they walked. Large wooden crates and sacks were filled to the brim with dried fruit, vegetables, and spices in all imaginable colors.
Hirka tried to be polite to everyone who approached the cart. “No, thank you, I don’t wear bangles,” or, “That’s lovely, but I don’t need a vase.” More to the point, she didn’t have any money. Who could afford all this? Hirka had never seen so many things in one place. She had no idea what half of what the merchants held up to her even was.
Ramoja laughed at her and told her to look straight ahead so she didn’t have to reply to everyone. “They can see that you’re curious, Hirka.”
So she looked up instead. Many of the houses had windows with colored glass. Some were left open, and from one of them hung an expensive-looking rug with a hunting motif in red and gold. From another hung a simple straw mat that looked about ready to fall apart. People wearing shoes of colored leather with metal buckles walked past people sitting barefoot, begging. Hirka saw a young boy slip his hands into a stranger’s pockets and sneak off into a dark alley with his loot. Hirka expected people to run after him, but nobody saw him. He was simply able to disappear. Invisible among thousands. Hirka stared after him in amazement.
Ramoja had to urge the horses onward when, confused by the crowds and with no clear path forward, they slowed to a stop. The smell of food, manure, and sweat was everywhere. But it gradually faded as they approached Eisvaldr. The stalls gave way to shops with hanging signs, like the inns had. The houses became bigger and more handsome. Family crests marked the entrances and there were carved eaves framing the roofs, which gradually went from being flat to sloped and covered with good black tiles. Each one perfectly shaped. The roof edges were furnished with small gutters made of the same kind of stone. In places Hirka could see the wall towering above the rooftops, even though it was some distance away.
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