A thousand eyes in the hall stared at the Council and at the Seer, who remained silent on the Ravenbearer’s staff. No one was shouting anymore. Everyone had quieted in anticipation. Anticipation that turned to fear from one moment to the next. Fear that the Council would fail in this one task. Giving Rime An-Elderin a seer to bow down to. One of the councillors shouted for the guardsmen. Asked them to seize the blasphemer. But none of the guardsmen moved. None of them were listening.
The hall was waiting. Waiting to see whether the Seer would reveal Himself. Whether He would punish the blasphemer. The Might revealed to Hirka that people were starting to understand. She could feel them flailing like the ground had disappeared from under them, and she would have cried for them, had she been able to. It was a pain too intense to bear, because it emanated from so many.
She took a step closer to Rime. Her feet were heavy, as if encased in iron. Her arms were lead weights that wouldn’t be budged. She couldn’t reach him where he hung in the air, only one step in front of her.
Then she felt them arrive. Hlosnian and Tein. Kolkagga. People shouted and pressed together in the middle of the room, away from the stones. Kolkagga came out between them. Black as night, they stepped out from the space between worlds. From walls that were no longer there. Hlosnian was holding onto one of them. Tein and Ynge were holding onto each other. Guardsmen threw frantic looks at each other. Someone made the sign of the Seer, as if warding off blindcraft.
Hirka wanted to tell them to move. But she couldn’t shout. Couldn’t tell them that the ravens were on their way. And then they came. Thousands of them. They came screaming out from the nothingness between the stones and immediately filled the hall. She had never seen anything like it—a storm of wings and talons with only one thing in mind.
Rime. Rime and the Might around him.
They flew around him in circles. A black, living pillar. The raven sitting on the Ravenbearer’s staff took flight and joined the fray. Rime hung in their midst. Wolf eyes in a whirlwind of birds. The Might swelled until the floor creaked and the ceiling groaned. Hirka had to fight to stay standing. Three windows shattered and the glass fell down toward them, but it stopped when it encountered the Might. The shards hung in midair, glittering like colored rain around the ravens.
Hirka saw Tein come toward her. She looked at him. Said a silent prayer through the Might, imploring him to act.
He gave you your victory in Ravnhov. Now you need to give him his.
Tein smiled as if seeing her for the first time. He nodded at her, walked up the steps and kneeled before Rime. The Council he’d spent his young life despising stared at him, at the golden crown on his chest. A warrior from Ravnhov. And he was bowing to Rime.
The hall fell to its knees. First those standing closest, then the rest, like a wave. They dropped to the ground and pressed their foreheads to the floor. Covered it with their acknowledgment, like small mounds in a landscape. Black-clad mounds showed who among them was Kolkagga.
Hirka shouted to Rime, but there was no sound. She shouted again, but the sound was lost inside her. Everything was lost inside her. She was an abyss for the Might. She was going to fall into herself and disappear.
Eir was the first of the Council to bow. The Ravenbearer kneeled before Rime, and the rest of the Council did the same. Some more willingly than others, but they couldn’t let the Ravenbearer bow alone. Hirka felt Rime’s disgust wash through her. He despised them, no matter standing or kneeling.
The last thing she saw was Hlosnian groping his way along the wall. He wasn’t looking at the Council or Rime. He had traveled the stone way, and found the biggest and first raven ring. Nothing else mattered. His fingers tore at the tiles to bare the gateways that had been hidden from the world.
Then she felt her knees hit the floor. She fell. First to the ground. Then into Rime. Everything turned to light.
BACK IN BLINDBÓL
Hirka was floating above the ground. In a dream where she was dead. Or had just been born. Green conifers and white fairy’s kiss slid past. She’d had this dream before. Rime carrying her through the woods from the Alldjup. He’d saved her, stopped her from falling.
She smiled. He didn’t get it. She’d fallen a lot farther than the depth of the Alldjup this time. He couldn’t pull her up from here. No one could. She’d fallen inward. Seen the world for what it was. Seen herself for what she was.
She missed the ravens. Where was she? She thought for a moment that she was stuck in the space between worlds. The emptiness between the stones. But then she felt wind on her face. The warmth of the hands that were carrying her. Breath against her ear. There was something here. Between the stones there was nothing, but there was something here. Maybe she was asleep in Slokna.
But she’d had this dream before. She’d been here before.
Her body was no longer hers. It was empty. A fragile shell that could be crushed by a puff of wind. A strange void under the watchful gaze of wolf eyes. She was being guarded. Guarded by something eternal. Something strong.
She’d had this dream before.
Shadows talking. She couldn’t hear what they were saying. Couldn’t see them. Just sensed them. Then she was lowered into the cold.
Alone again.
This was more familiar to her. Being alone wasn’t a dream. Being alone was reality. The way it had always been. The way everyone was.
Light flashed through the grass. She was surrounded by green. She’d become an insect. Shrunk and disappeared into the undergrowth. And now that it had finally happened, it brought her no joy. Nor sorrow. It just was what it was. Peace.
Hirka blinked and her surroundings grew sharper. She hadn’t shrunk. She was lying on a mat, on a wooden floor, looking out at the grass. A gray woollen blanket covered her up to the waist. Grass and a floor? She was inside and outside at the same time. She recognized Rime’s smell. Where was he? What had happened? Her jacket was folded neatly beside her, but she was still wearing her clothes. Hirka pulled herself up onto her arm. Her entire body felt bruised, but she couldn’t see any damage. No marks. No wounds.
The room was bare. The folding doors in front of her were pulled aside, opening onto a green mountain. Two ravens danced in the wind. They dove down into the depths in front of her and disappeared. She was high up. She was in Blindból.
“Everything will be different now.”
Hirka gave a start and turned toward the voice. A man was sitting in the middle of the room. His skin was the color of burnt almonds. He was bald and dressed in black. Kolkagga.
There was a hole in the floor between them. A simple open hearth, with a cast-iron pot steaming with ylir root. The man poured the extract into a bowl and held it out for Hirka. She took it and drank. The smell awakened her senses, sharpening them beyond recognition. The tea tasted of a hundred different things, and she could track each and every one from fire to stone, through earth and seasons. She closed her eyes. The bowl was rough against her fingers. Everything was exactly as it seemed.
“You know what I mean,” he said.
Hirka opened her eyes again. She knew what he meant, but she didn’t know how he could know. He looked at her, but without looking her directly in the eyes. He was looking somewhere behind her. As if he were just imagining her in the room. He spoke with great solemnity. His words were commonplace, but weighted by fate. Hirka suddenly felt like she’d been waiting for him all her life. She opened her mouth to ask about Rime, and what she was doing here, but he interrupted her before she could. “I have something for you.”
“What?”
“You can have it when you’ve finished asking all your questions.”
Hirka closed her mouth. It was tempting to pretend she didn’t have any questions. But not tempting enough. She finished the bowl of tea and was about to start asking, but he spoke before she could. Hirka smiled. He was like Tein, but at least Tein waited until she had started talking before he interrupted.
Tein. He bent the knee to Rime.
She remembered.
“You’re on the top of Aldaudi, in one of the Kolkagga training camps. You’re in Blindból.” Finally he looked directly at her, as if he was expecting a reaction. She resisted the urge to say she’d been in Blindból before, and that it didn’t frighten her. Instead she laughed.
“Is that funny?”
“No. But it’s beautiful.”
He smiled the smile of a young boy. How old was he? Forty? A hundred? Impossible to say.
“I’m Svarteld. Master of Kolkagga.” He picked up the pot and Hirka held out her bowl for a refill. The surrealness of the situation dawned on her. What would she have said if someone had told her that she would end up sitting in Blindból drinking tea with the head of Kolkagga? But that wasn’t the only thing she wouldn’t have believed only a few months ago. What if she had been told that before the onset of winter, the Council would fall, and an attempt would be made to sacrifice her to the blind? Maybe not knowing was a blessing.
She took the bowl again. Hot with fresh tea.
“I’m Hirka. The tailless girl. I’m menskr. A child of Odin.” It was her turn to look at him, expecting a reaction.
“So I hear,” he said, unmoved.
Hirka sat up carefully. She stretched her legs, then pulled her feet toward her and let her knees fall apart so that she mirrored his posture. He removed the lid from the pot and added some fresh soldrop petals.
“You needed rest,” he said. “That’s why you’re here. The Might took you to the brink. That sort of thing can chase your nerves outside your body, but in a good way. You hear everything, see everything, and—”
“Feel everything.”
He smiled briefly. “The world’s been turned upside down out there. Being in Eisvaldr would drive you mad right now. If you lived long enough.”
“If I haven’t gone mad yet, I doubt I will anytime soon.”
“No one knows which way the wind will blow. Don’t forget who you are. You were there when the Seer fell. You’re the embling who arrived with the deadborn. Don’t get me wrong, there are people who think you’re the Seer, but there are more who think you brought about His downfall. You weren’t safe in Mannfalla. So he brought you here.”
She knew who he meant.
“Where is he? I have to see him.”
“Rime is busy in Eisvaldr. The world can’t be righted overnight.” Svarteld looked at her. “Not normally,” he added. So Rime had taken Ilume’s chair, and now he was going to try to reform the eleven kingdoms.
“Is it good or bad?” Hirka asked.
“The world being turned upside down? That all depends on who—”
“No, I mean what you’ve got for me.”
“I don’t know.”
“Am I going to be happy or sad when I get it?”
“I don’t know that either. Have you asked all your questions now?”
She hadn’t. “The war? What’s going to happen to Ravnhov?”
“Nobody knows for certain. The fighting stopped when Bromfjell belched out its glowing innards. They say the battlefield split open like a scab. Who knows, that might have killed more people than the fighting, but in any case we now have a fragile truce. Rime is in a tug-of-war with the Council for the third day running. They’re clinging to their chairs. Nobody wants to accept the blame for Urd Vanfarinn’s election to the Council. Some still want to destroy Ravnhov. It will always be that way. Rime has hard times ahead of him. It’s impossible to say what he’ll choose to do. Maybe he’ll do away with the entire Council. Maybe he’ll build a new one. Maybe he’ll disband Kolkagga.”
“Maybe he’ll just get rid of the silver basins from the halls,” she said.
They smiled at each other like old friends. “Maybe. Whatever he decides, I’m at his service.”
Hirka remembered that she owed him a thank-you. “You followed him! You came with him to Ravnhov, and you helped us when …” She remembered what she had done at the stone circle and stared down at her hand. She could feel the weight of the sword that had taken Urd’s tail. The sword that had made him a sacrifice for the blind. Dragged away by the scruff of the neck, screaming into nothingness. She swallowed before she continued. “When the blind came. You followed Rime, even though he had killed three of his own, and even though he was an outlaw. Like me. Was it on your orders?”
“Kolkagga don’t give orders. We follow them. I followed Ilume’s.”
Hirka was taken aback for a moment. “Ilume’s dead.”
“Yes, who other than Ilume can give orders from Slokna?” He laughed, making it sound like he’d almost forgotten how. He continued. “A raven arrived with a letter from Ilume the night she died.”
Hirka remembered. They’d been standing by the tree, before it shattered. Ilume had entered. She had sent a raven. Before the argument with Rime. “She asked you to follow Rime?” Hirka could hear the doubt in her own voice.
“Ilume knew that the Council’s days were numbered. She knew she had reason to fear for her life. She wrote as though she was already dead.”
The wind chased a pine cone into the room. It rolled toward the hearth. Svarteld got up and threw it back outside. His movements were strangely controlled. As though everything he did was ripe with purpose. He closed the folding doors before sitting back down. His eyes alighted on the fire. It was reflected in his eyes, but Hirka was certain that it was the other way around. He was the fire. The flames were trying to reflect him.
“Almost thirteen years ago, I received an order. That order wasn’t sent by raven. I was asked to come to Eisvaldr, to the An-Elderin family home. The snow was knee-high in Blindból, so it was dusk before I made it there. Ilume was sitting on a bench in the garden, as though it was summer. She had her back to me. Snow had settled on her robes.”
Svarteld’s voice was gravelly, and he spoke with long pauses between his sentences, as though he didn’t know the story himself. As though it was happening as he told it. “Her daughter, Gesa, had left Mannfalla. Together with her husband and her six-year-old son, she had set out for Ravnhov. She carried with her knowledge that could never be allowed to reach them. Kolkagga’s orders were to stop them.”
Hirka suddenly felt ill. “She ordered their death?”
“That was the will of the Council, to start with. But Ilume had bargained with them. Rime, Gesa’s son, was only six. He didn’t know what his mother knew, and even if he did know, he was too young to understand. Of course, An-Elderin’s opponents were keen to kill the boy too. To put an end to the family line. A family that had had a seat at the table since the first twelve. But that didn’t happen. An-Elderin has more friends than enemies in Insringin. Ilume had to sacrifice her daughter, but she was able to keep her grandchild.”
Hirka stared at the dark figure in front of her. A man who was to all intents and purposes a stranger. “How could you obey an order like that? Kill innocents because they knew the truth about everything?!”
He gave a crooked smile. Emptied his tea bowl and set it on the floor. “As fate would have it, we didn’t have to kill them. The snow did the job for us, but that doesn’t mean their blood isn’t on our hands. It was the Might that woke the snow. The Might we used to move past them quickly and unseen. But even if I’d used my sword, I do not decide who is guilty and who is innocent. That is up to the Council. We are the Council’s sword. We don’t ask why. The Seer has His reasons. Or He would, if He existed. And maybe He does exist, in another form. Rime has made good use of these past few days. He’s had to. There needs to be order. Had he not acted as he has done, the power vacuum left by the Seer would have led to war. Chaos. Nobody other than Rime could have seized the opportunity. Nobody else could have done what he’s done. Torn down and rebuilt on the same day. He wants to give Urd’s chair to Ravnhov. Can you imagine …”
Hirka suddenly felt restless. She was sitting in no-man’s-land while Rime was hard at work in Eisvaldr, surrounded by Council families and power-crazed guilds. Svarteld seemed to thi
nk for a moment before he continued. “But regardless of what he chooses, our job will be the same. We carry out his and the Council’s will. That is the price we pay for order.”
Hirka shook her head. “What is it with you? What is wrong with Kolkagga? You talk about death and about killing as though it were the most natural thing in the world.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Nobody has the right to take another person’s life.”
“That’s true. No one has the right to take a life. But all of us are already dead.”
Hirka rolled her eyes. “Yes, so I’ve heard.”
Why hadn’t Ilume said anything? Why hadn’t she explained to Rime what she was thinking, what she was doing? Hirka pictured Rime’s clenched jaw. Wolf eyes. Presumably he wouldn’t have listened, regardless of what Ilume had said.
“Svarteld, have you told Rime about Gesa?”
“Rime knows. He put the pieces together a long time ago. His head and his heart are in the right place.”
“You’re fond of him.” It wasn’t a question on Hirka’s part. It was a realization.
“I dug him out of the snow. Dug him out to hand him over to Ilume. So that he would grow up as one of them. As an An-Elderin. I carried him in my arms through Blindból, and the whole time I thought he would have been better off dead. Then came the Rite, and he shocked Eisvaldr when he chose us. He wanted to be Kolkagga. A weapon. A servant. I couldn’t let that happen. If anything happened to him, we would all be punished for it. So I was hard on him. I took him to be a frightened pup who would run off with his tail between his legs at the first sign of opposition. But Rime didn’t give in. I pushed him harder. Maybe because I started to believe in him. He’s strong. Fast. He listens. He makes it worth it. So, yes, I’m fond of him too.”
Svarteld looked her in the eyes. She blushed.
“But you know, Hirka, nothing he’s been through here can measure up to what he has to go through now. Politics aren’t for just anyone.”
“And he hates politics!”
Odin's Child Page 50
