The Rot

by Siri Pettersen

  Rime grabbed his swords at the door and started running up toward Eisvaldr.

  They forced her to leave. And now she’s in danger.

  He was going to wring their necks with his own two hands.

  RUIN

  One by one they came puttering in, as if they had all the time in the world. Led by Noldhe Saurpassarid, who at the age of eighty ought to have been the slowest, but the eldest among them still respected Council meetings. She pulled her chair out from the table.

  “No need to sit down,” Rime said coolly.

  She looked at the others. They said nothing, so she pushed the chair back in and remained standing. Sigra Kleiv folded her arms over her chest and smothered Rime with her gaze. Few things bothered the leaders of the eleven kingdoms more than being frogmarched to an unscheduled meeting. The fact that Rime was behind it only added insult to injury. A pup, Ilume had called him. A nineteen-year-old pup. The Ravenbearer for a council where hardly anyone was under fifty.

  They gathered at the other end of the table. As far away from him as they could get. Every movement they made tested his nerves. Shrugs. Eye-rolls. Smiles hidden behind wrinkled hands. How long would he hold out? Was he going mad?

  No—if he were going mad, he wouldn’t be aware of it. Wasn’t that how it worked? He clung to that thought.

  Garm was yet to arrive. Rime let them wait. He wouldn’t say a word until they were all there. Sigra Kleiv opened her mouth just as Garm Darkdaggar entered.

  The Council was assembled. Eleven men and women. There should have been twelve, but Rime still hadn’t filled Urd’s place. Ravnhov would have that chair, no matter the cost. It was time to do what was necessary. Like Svarteld had said.

  Don’t start something you can’t finish.

  Rime turned away. If he had to look at them, he wouldn’t be able to control his fury. He stared out the window, at the ruin of the bridge. The ice had started to melt. Water trickled down the carvings and collected in one big droplet at the end of a serpent’s tongue. He began.

  “Anyone who tries to deny their actions will never set foot in this chamber again. I haven’t called you here to ask. Or to explain. I know. I’m here to tell you what is going to happen.”

  He heard someone approach. “Rime …”

  Jarladin. The big-hearted ox. A man he’d respected since he was a child. He was the only one of these wretched relics he could bear to listen to. But not now. The time for listening was over. Rime shut him out and continued.

  “I know you asked her to leave.”

  He heard them mumbling. They weren’t even sure what he was talking about. Hirka was insignificant to them. Forgotten. Sent away. As far as they were concerned, she might as well have never existed. The drop of water on the serpent’s tongue fell. Rime felt like he was doing the same. Dropping down toward the stone circle below, to be dashed on the ground.

  He turned to face them. “What did you promise her? What did you have to offer her that was enough to make her leave? Answer me!”

  The silence roared in his ears.

  “Don’t make me draw my swords …”

  Noldhe gasped as if she were only a girl. They huddled together. Mumbled to each other. Leivlugn Taid put a hand behind his ear. “What’s that he said? Did he say swords?”

  Garm Darkdaggar swept his cloak over his shoulder and walked toward the door with determined strides. Rime knew exactly what would stop him. “Leave and you’ll never set foot in here again, Garm!”

  Darkdaggar stopped. He was a practical man. They were all practical. They were loyal followers of the path of least resistance. He hated them in that moment. More than ever.

  “Things are going to be different,” Rime said, ignoring the tremor in his voice. “Tomorrow I’m traveling to Ravnhov to meet with Eirik. And on behalf of all of us, I’m inviting him to take Urd’s chair.”

  Sigra snorted. “We’ve already discussed this to death! What about the heirs? You can’t—”

  “Heirs? Heirs no longer exist. No one is going to inherit a chair. Never again. The eleven kingdoms will choose who sits in the chairs, and the families will cease to dominate this council. I am the last heir the world will see.”

  “You’ll be the ruin of us all,” Freid whispered, face haggard. She was a Vangard, and their family had never had a ravenbearer. Now they never would. It was over. It was all over. He’d reduce Eisvaldr to ashes if he had to.

  “Ruin? You wouldn’t recognize ruin if it slapped you in the face! You have no idea what you’ve done! You’ve sent her to her death. And her death will lead to your own. Another war. A thousand-year war. Our fate won’t be decided here. Not in Ym. It will be decided where she is, and you haven’t even stopped to ask how she got here. Or why. You know nothing! You understand nothing! She cracked open the gateways and now … now we’re …”

  Rime couldn’t find the words. He looked at them. They looked at each other, and he could tell they thought he was insane. After all, what did they know about the deadborn? About Graal? They’d never known the Might the way he had. They weren’t seeing the big picture. Their own downfall.

  “You gave her away …” he heard himself say. “You gave the key to our enemies. Traveler’s blood.”

  He felt Jarladin’s hand on his shoulder. “Enough, Rime.”

  Rime swept toward them. Only Sigra stood her ground. “What did you promise her? Answer me! What did you give her to make her leave?!”

  Jarladin grabbed him and held him back. “Rime, I’ll explain. You have my word. But let them go. They don’t know what you know.” Jarladin nodded at the others. They left the room, one by one, the same way they’d come in. Garm and Sigra could barely conceal their smiles. He knew the reason. They thought he’d lost his mind, and that would make him easier to get rid of.

  Rime glared at them until they were gone. Then he turned to Jarladin. “What have you done?”

  “It was Eir, Garm, and me. The others did nothing.”

  “What did you do?”

  “We went to meet Hirka in Blindból. After …” He didn’t need to say more. After the Rite Hall fell. After the world was turned upside down.

  Jarladin pulled out two chairs, but Rime remained standing. The ox sat down and rested his elbows on the table. His well-groomed beard quivered on one side. Rime stared at him. He’d never seen him look so small.

  “You have to understand, Rime. The Council all knew that she couldn’t stay. You know that, too. You’ve said it yourself: she led the blind here. And what sort of peace do you think we’d have managed with a child of Odin walking around Eisvaldr? The girl didn’t belong here. So yes. We asked her to leave. No coercion. No threats. We asked. And she accepted our offer.”

  “Liar!” Rime seethed. “Hirka can’t be bought. Not for any price. There’s nothing in the world you could have given her.”

  Jarladin’s face was racked with sorrow. His eyes were laid bare. He was telling the truth. Rime swallowed. “What? What was the price?”

  “You.”

  Rime braced his hands on the table and stared at him. “Me?”

  Jarladin nodded. “She understood more than you do. She understood that this chair is the most dangerous place in the eleven kingdoms, so she only asked for one thing—my word. She left in exchange for my promise that I’d keep you alive, as leader. A promise you’re making increasingly difficult to keep, boy.”

  Rime collapsed onto the chair. Jarladin kept talking. Saying that Hirka would manage. That she hadn’t left empty-handed. That Rime had to forget about her. Let go. His words ran together into a meaningless jumble. About repairing the damage. About assuaging the others. Then it was quiet, and Rime realized that Jarladin had left.

  He raised his hand to his chest. Felt for the pendant, but it wasn’t there. He’d given it to her when she left. All the points they’d competed for as children. It was as if it had never happened. How many points would she have gotten for this? For leaving him, in exchange for Jarladin’s loyalty?
>
  All that was good in Ym had left with her. And he hadn’t stopped her. He’d let her leave. And to face what? A bloodthirsty deadborn who’d been trapped in the human world for more years than anyone could fathom. Rime’s thoughts circled relentlessly around the questions he’d been trying to avoid. What would become of her? What would she be used for? To open the gateways even wider? To start another war?

  Fallacy! Myths and lies!

  It was hopeless. Deep down he knew that everything he’d read and heard was true. And he couldn’t find her. Or warn her. Maybe he could force the gateways open the way Urd had done?

  No. That would destroy them, and then he’d never get her back.

  Rime stared at the table. His family name stared back. An-Elderin. Set in stone. Trapped. For generations. He was what he was. Ilume’s blood. Council blood. Was he doomed to be like all those before him? Unable to act? Unable to change anything?

  He rested his head on the table. Felt the cold stone against his forehead. His pulse throbbed in his ears with the echo of Freid’s words.

  You’ll be the ruin of us all.

  GRAAL

  Rún Museum of Art in Copenhagen was a marvel. Taller than a Seer’s hall, with entire walls and roofs made of crystal-clear glass. Hirka kept bumping into other visitors because she couldn’t stop looking up at the sky, even though she was indoors. It was a bit like the greenhouse, but much, much bigger.

  Glass doors. Glass windows. Glass cubes in the middle of rooms with nothing inside them other than carved wooden figures. When she squinted, it was as if the entire building disappeared. A dream. A fantasy. A fragile palace that existed and didn’t exist at the same time.

  “Hello!” she shouted, just to hear the echo bounce off the walls. A group of elderly visitors in padded clothes turned to look at her. She raised a hand in greeting, but they pretended they hadn’t seen her, like she was as transparent as the building itself.

  Stefan dragged her up an impressive curved staircase with floating wooden steps. “I didn’t drive all day and night just for you to get us thrown out,” he whispered, tugging at his leather jacket as if it wasn’t sitting properly. She felt as uncomfortable as he looked. She’d reluctantly agreed to wear the clothes that Allegra had given her, in what Stefan had called a futile attempt to blend in.

  “Why would they throw us out?”

  “Do we look like the type of people who hang out in museums?” Stefan glanced back at Naiell. The blindling was the only one in the museum wearing sunglasses. He was carrying his jacket over his arm. His white shirt was pulled taut across his chest, and it was plain to see that he wasn’t like anyone else. But that was because she knew what he was.

  “Here it is.” Stefan pointed at a gray sign she couldn’t read. She shifted her bag on her back and followed him along the railing and farther into the room. She stopped in front of a huge hole in the floor. Stefan kept walking but didn’t fall. She gaped. More glass. Glass you could walk on.

  Stefan made it to the other side in one piece without seeming to notice what he was doing. Hirka couldn’t bring herself to follow him. She wanted to, but her entire body screamed no. She walked around instead. Naiell strode straight across like he’d been walking on glass his entire life. Maybe he thought he could still fly.

  They found the books, volume after volume arranged in locked cabinets on the walls. Nine of them had their own display cases. They sat in a row, protected by glass.

  “This one?” Stefan stopped in front of one of the display cases. Hirka looked down. The thick book lay open, its pages full of red and blue patterns.

  “What is it?”

  He leaned over to read a small sign on the glass. “Music, I think. Old sheet music.”

  “Wrong section. We need to find the gateway room.”

  “Find the what?”

  “The gateway room,” she said. “And then the recipe shelf.”

  “Do you mean instructions?”

  “Instructions, yes.”

  “You think you’re hilarious, don’t you?”

  “I do,” she said, grinning, mostly to conceal her frustration. She was surrounded by books and pictures she couldn’t even begin to understand. Colorful and illustrated and important-looking. What did she have to go on? Pictures stuck to a wall by a forgetful old man. What had she really seen? Vengethorn, or just some straw?

  Stefan had probably been right all along. Why would anyone leave something valuable in a place like this? In the open, where everyone could see it? If instructions for the raven rings really existed, surely Graal would have taken them a long time ago.

  “We’re on a wild goose chase,” Stefan said.

  “I was thinking exactly the same thing,” she replied, unexpectedly relieved. What would she have done if there had been something here? Destroyed it? Stolen it? And kept running for the rest of her life with some treasure that a millennia-old blindling would kill to sink his claws into?

  It was probably just as well there was nothing here. She breathed out, feeling lighter than she had in weeks. Almost free. Although she’d always feared crowds, she suddenly felt safer with people around her. Humans. Children of Odin, all of them. Ambling between the displays. Chatting and admiring the exhibits. It was all so normal to them. Maybe one day it could be normal to her as well.

  She smiled and walked along the row of books. One of them caught her eye. It lay open, like the others. Balanced on a stand that cradled its spine. It was an entirely ordinary book, bound in black leather. The binding was thin and bendy, making it look like a crow in flight, hovering under the glass. No decoration. No color. Compared to the others, it was boring. Unremarkable in every way.

  The strange thing about it was that there was nothing written in it. One page was completely blank, and the other only had three small circles, drawn in black ink. Rays emanated from them, reminding Hirka of the way Vetle used to draw the sun. They were positioned seemingly at random on the page, and apart from them, there was nothing else. Not a single letter. Not a single symbol.

  “Art,” Stefan snorted behind her. “That crap probably costs as much as a Jaguar. Like I’ve always said: completely pointless. I need a smoke.”

  Hirka crouched down so she could study the cover. Two diagonal lines had been stamped into the leather. The symbol seemed familiar, for all its simplicity. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was. But it gave her chills.

  Chills?

  Hirka straightened up again. Something was wrong. The air seemed to thicken around her. It was charged. Waiting. Like before lightning strikes.

  She wasn’t alone.

  The certainty made her blood run cold. She looked at Naiell. He took off his glasses and lifted his chin, as if scenting the air. He could feel it, too. He threw his jacket on the floor and backed away.

  “Naiell?” Hirka reached out to him, but he paid her no heed. His eyes darted around as he turned in a circle like a madman.

  “What is it?” Stefan asked. “What’s wrong with him?”

  Hirka knew. Her entire body knew.

  “He’s here …”

  Stefan gave her a confused look before catching on. Then he reacted. Reached for his gun. Hirka grabbed his arm, and he seemed to realize his foolishness. Weapons were madness, particularly in a place like this.

  Hirka looked around at the humans. Ordinary people. Or was that him? The bald man leaning over the first book they’d looked at? No … his fingers were completely normal. Was it that other man? The one with the little girl? No, normal eyes. Completely normal.

  Hirka felt all her hair stand on end. She knew he was here. She could feel it. Smell it. There was no other explanation for the certainty that had gripped her.

  He’s here. Graal is here.

  She ran over to the railing and looked down at the level below. There were far too many people milling about down there. Smiling. Unsuspecting. Some alone. Some in groups. Hirka wanted to scream, to yell at them to get out, but she couldn’t find the words. What
would she say? She didn’t even know what the danger was. All she knew was that Naiell was terrified. The Seer. Deathly pale and pressed up against the wall of books. Held fast by an unseen danger.

  A man came up the stairs. He was nicely dressed in a brown leather coat, gloves, and dark glasses. His hair was short and black. He ran two fingers along the railing as he climbed. Slow. Deliberate. Step by step. It was like time was standing still.

  The man looked up. Hirka somehow knew he was watching her, despite the glasses. He reached the top of the stairs and walked around the edge of the room, as if circling in on them.

  Stefan …

  Hirka looked around for him. He was moving toward her, as was Naiell. Probably the worst place to be at that moment. She knew she ought to do something, but her head felt frozen. Bloodless. The man stopped a short distance from her. His coat was open. He slipped his hands in his pockets and stood looking at her.

  He was a bit shorter than Naiell. Narrower in the face. And he carried himself differently. Calm. Unafraid. With the ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. That was the scariest part. Hirka swallowed, her throat dry as sand. All that stood between them was two display cases with books in them. A couple of long strides and he’d have her.

  She suddenly remembered what Rime had said in Blindból, the time Slokna had almost claimed him. When Kolkagga had been closing in on them in the mountains. He’d asked her to stay behind him, to make sure he was always between her and Kolkagga.

  But Rime wasn’t here. She was on her own. Stefan and Naiell were still some distance away. She was alone before the man who was planning her downfall. Everyone’s downfall.

  Graal took off his glasses. Folded them up and put them in his vest pocket. His eyes were black as ink. He pulled off his gloves as he looked at Naiell.

  “You look tired, brother,” he said in ymish.

  Naiell bared his teeth and arched his back like a cat. Hirka hadn’t really grasped the intensity of his hatred until now. What the war between the brothers meant. Fear and fury controlled every muscle in Naiell’s body.