A Fire of Roses

by Melinda R. Cordell

  “The leader is Nauma,” Gefjun wrote in the dirt. “Her magic put all of you to sleep, midbattle, and you slept until she woke you here. Everyone here is meant to be a sacrifice. At the top of the mountain is where dragons go to die. She intends to kill us all to raise dragons from the dead and bend them to her will.”

  Utter silence followed her words. The prisoners looked at each other, frowning, and narrowed their eyes at her.

  “Are you crazy?” one of them said.

  “No!” Gefjun scribbled in the dirt.

  A gentle touch on her arm. It was King Varinn with his hand out. She lay her writing stick in his hand and stepped back.

  “I am an aide to King Varinn,” Ibn read as Varinn wrote in the dirt. Gefjun wondered why Varinn was hiding his identity from the prisoners. “I came here when we discovered that Nauma had stolen one of our ships from battle. Gefjun came with me to kill Nauma and stop your ship from being taken, but we have failed in our objective.”

  “You have not failed,” said the veteran. “You were able to warn us of what is to come.”

  “I’m not sure that I wanted to know that I’m being sacrificed to an undead dragon,” somebody else said. “That sounds wrong in so many important ways. I’d rather die in hand-to-hand combat, to be perfectly honest.”

  “Rare is the man who gets to choose the manner in which he dies,” said Ibn as he read Varinn’s runes. Then he looked up at the group of prisoners. “Does anybody know the methods of sacrifice for these particular magics? This raising of the undead, much less undead dragons, is an act unheard of in my native land. No Iberian would dream of this kind of desecration of the honored dead.”

  “These acts are not spoken of here, either,” an older warrior said, leaning on a rough staff he’d made early on in their march. “The dead in their burrows can live in unlife. If you go down and try to plunder their wealth, you must fight the dead hand to hand. Cold iron has no effect on the dead unless you have fought them first.”

  “Just like Grendel in that old story,” said an worn-looking woman. “Nobody could stop him until Beowulf fought him hand-to-hand and ripped his arm off.”

  For some reason, Gefjun suddenly thought of Ostryg, lying in his barrow, and felt as if her own soul crumbled in upon itself. You have done this. You have left him behind in a cold pile of dirt while your heart has gone all uncalled for and fallen for King Varinn.

  She wished at that moment she could snuff out her unruly heart. She didn’t want to look at Varinn, to see his deep brown eyes.

  Somebody piped up, “What magic do we have that can fight back against somebody who bewitched an entire ship and brought us to this forsaken place? What kind of music or magic do we have?”

  A number of the prisoners had singing magic of one kind or another. Some were very good mages, some were self-taught.

  “Can any one undo the magic on our voices?” Gefjun quickly wrote.

  Ibn read that aloud. Then he said, “I might be able to. Stand here and open your mouth.”

  She did. He looked inside her throat, then sang a quiet phrase in a language she didn’t recognize.

  “May I put my hand on your throat?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  He lay his nut-brown fingers over her windpipe, and sang a few quiet phrases. He placed two fingers at the hollow of her neck, sang another phrase – all while peering into her mouth. Then he removed his hand and had her close her mouth. “Try now.”

  Gefjun said, “Is my voice,” but then her vocal cords seized up and she coughed.

  “Don’t say anything yet,” Ibn advised. “Stand up, please. I need to do a little more work.” Now he lay both hands, open and flat, gently on both sides of her throat, his long sleeves sliding down his arms in the cold. “I’m going to sing something,” he told her. “It might hurt. But when you feel the need to cough, then cough. Don’t be embarrassed to cough on me. You will be trying to expel something.”

  Gefjun smiled. He sounded just like she did when she was talking to a patient. She nodded.

  Ibn lay his hands on her throat and started singing, still quietly, as several of the others kept a lookout on Nauma’s troops. His eyes met hers, though not seeing her, as he sang.

  Searing pain ripped through her throat. She opened her mouth to cry out, but there was no sound. Then she was racked by coughs. She coughed silently, her vocal cords still bound.

  He sang one last, quiet note, infused with command.

  She coughed hard. And something red flew out of her mouth and into the thin grass on the ground.

  “Oh,” she gasped. Then she put her hand to her throat in surprise. “My voice!”

  “Don’t talk much yet. Don’t strain it.” Ibn leaned over to pick up what she had coughed up.

  Eew! She thought – until he held the red object up into the light.

  She’d coughed up a ruby, one that was about the size of the nail on her little finger. It was astonishingly beautiful, a dark wine-red with flecks of brilliant red deep within. Gefjun’s eyes grew large.

  “No kidding,” Ibn said, looking at it. “Interesting.”

  “How in the world did I have a ruby in my throat?” Gefjun whispered. She couldn’t take her eyes off that lovely gem.

  “It’s not really a ruby,” Ibn explained. “It’s Nauma’s song magic—specifically, the part of it that had your throat bound—only encapsulated into a physical form. Here,” he said, placing it in the palm of her hand. “Swallow it.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Swallow it. Eat her magic. Don’t chew it, though. It will blast your teeth out of your mouth if you do.”

  “And you want me to put that in my stomach?” she nearly squawked.

  Ibn placed his hand over hers to quiet her. “Yes, so you can slowly absorb her magic into your body. Nauma had left a piece of magic latched onto your throat to keep you silent. What I have done is unlatch that magic, and then I have taken her magic and closed it up into this form.” He tapped the ruby in her hand. “Swallow it whole. Once your body absorbs it, it will give you power. Use it now. Swallow it.”

  Gefjun did, though slowly. She washed the ruby down with a few swallows from a bladder of water. It tasted like stone, and then she smelled roses. Then it faded.

  “Now you, sir,” Ibn said.

  Varinn’s eyebrows arched.

  “Let me place my hands on your neck. Quickly, before Nauma’s forces suspect anything.”

  He sang just as he had with Gefjun. This time, when he picked up what Varinn had coughed up, it was a large, brilliant diamond so lustrous that it cast small moons of light over the faces of the prisoners who had pressed close to see it. All eyes were agog at the brilliant stone.

  Ibn raised it and said quietly, “God has blessed us this day. A diamond. That explains a lot. Swallow this, quickly.”

  Varinn did. And he smiled. That must have been from the roses, Gefun thought.

  Then Ibn said quietly, “Your majesty.” And he bowed. “King Varinn.”

  Varinn startled. So did Gefjun. As far as she knew, he’d told nobody what he was.

  “How did you know who I am? And who are you?” Varinn asked.

  “Why, you yourself told me.” Ibn inclined his head to Varinn. “Only a king would have coughed up a diamond. Only a king.”

  Some of the prisoners started to bow. But Varinn whispered harshly, “No. No bowing. Do you want her soldiers to notice?”

  Gefjun felt that tension in her own body as she glanced over at Nauma’s soldiers who had finished their meals and were now getting to their feet.

  Then Nauma shouted, “Move on! Move on!”

  “Mages,” Gefjun said in a low voice, “come together over here. We must fight back in a unified front. Her magic is too powerful, and none of us can fight her alone.”

  “Are you sure about that?” one of the men said, coming over.

  King Varinn said mildly, “Both she and I stood together against Nauma and we still couldn’t keep her fr
om singing us down.”

  The man said “Huh,” but he lifted his face just a little bit, a scornful look in his eyes. “That’s just a girl over there, and a king couldn’t out-sing her?”

  Gefjun steamed. “Why don’t you go over there and sing her down? Right now? That would save us a lot of trouble.”

  “Enough,” Varinn said. “We have no time.”

  “We have farther to march,” Gefjun said quietly. “When we get to the top, surround the king. We will lay hands on him and send him power to blast Nauma as she deserves.”

  “Hear, hear,” the prisoners said quietly.

  That made some of the guards come over. “Break it up,” they said, shoving some of the prisoners around. “This isn’t a picnic.”

  “It would be a picnic if you’d give us some of your food,” somebody jested, only to get shoved by the guards.

  The guards drove them forward into the snow.

  Some of the prisoners slipped on patches of ice. Some wept silently. Some kept their heads high, fury burning in their eyes. Together, the prisoners walked forward to meet their final fates.

  But, oddly, Gefjun heard a whirr of wings. Dragon! she thought, but no, the wingbeats were too small to be a dragon coming to their rescue.

  But what bird would be up this high? She looked toward the source of the sound, though her poor eyes couldn’t see much in the dim light of sunset.

  A little black speck came laboring up the mountain, flying directly to her.

  It was a puffin.

  Her puffin friend, flying to her with its little black wings and a beakful of eels. It had flown all this way!

  It landed on her shoulder, and Gefjun was about to burst with pride for the little guy. It puffed up and stood straight, looking around it with its head high, its little chest heaving. The prisoners around them watched in astonishment. Some of them laughed, though quietly, so Nauma wouldn’t notice what was happening.

  “Our avenger is here, our hero!”

  “So are you the queen of the puffin army now?”

  Gefjun was happy to see her friend, too happy to speak. He stood on her shoulder, bolting down his beakful of eels. He would eye one prisoner or another as if carefully assessing each one, then he would bolt down some more eels.

  “The great puffin is in our midst,” several of the prisoners whispered. “All hail the puffin.”

  Once he’d finished all his eels, he tucked himself against her neck under her hair, where he made a quiet purring sound that delighted her.

  “I wish I had a puffin friend,” King Varinn sighed.

  Gefjun simply took his hand.

  He laughed quietly and couldn’t meet her eyes. “My dear, you are full of surprises.” He squeezed her hand in his gently, and he didn’t let go.

  The prisoners walked through the snow to their doom with high hearts. Gefjun saw this and loved them all for it, even as the snow got into her boots and the skirt of her kirtle accumulated a hard crust of ice that slapped against her legs.

  The prisoners laughed and sent glances back to Gefjun, who pointed at the puffin asleep under her hair, and met their smiles.

  Ibn had joined Gefjun and Varinn. He nodded, seeing the change in the prisoners’ demeanors. “This is good. I pray this can keep their hearts up. Nauma will raise her undead dragons through fear and hatred. The less of that we can give her, the better.”

  “Not an easy task,” Varinn murmured, trying not to let his lips move so Nauma’s troops wouldn’t suspect he had his voice back.

  The sky peeked out beyond the rocks ahead. They were getting close to the top. Gefjun’s heart bottomed out, and she swallowed.

  The top of this mountain might well be the far edge of her life. This might be where she and the other prisoners met their end. She grew sick at heart, for none of the prisoners had swords to defend themselves with. And if they died without their hands on their swords, these brave prisoners wouldn’t go to Valhalla, the great hall of warriors.

  A light snow started falling. Her puffin peeked out from her hair and looked around.

  Prodded and driven by the guards, Gefjun and the prisoners clambered up over a series of rocks. When Gefjun reached the top, she stopped dead with a gasp when she saw what was on the other side.

  The rocky ground sloped down to a wide area that was surrounded on three sides by high ridges of furrowed stone. A great arch of rock curved high into the air above them. It was as if they’d stumbled upon a banquet hall at the top of a mountain, as wide and grand and solemn as any palace made by humans.

  And on the stone floor below this enormous, arching roof of rock lay the dragon dead of centuries past.

  The dragons lay in rows. Each head faced front, their forelegs tucked under them, their wings folded, their tails curled neatly behind them. This was their burial ground, their final resting place. The dragons farthest back in the hall were now mere skeletons, and some of them were just heaps of dust that glimmered with what remained of their scales. The newest ones, the ones closest to them, still had their skin and scales and wings intact, though they looked withered and whitened. All the dragons lay in the stillness, as far back as the eye could see in that vast space.

  It was for all the world like a great hall—or a great barrow, a burial chamber. That arching roof overhead kept the snow and ice at bay, keeping the moisture out, so the dragons lying on the ground, as far as the eye could see, stayed dry.

  Gefjun fell silent with awe, drinking in the profound wonder that stirred her to her soul. All voices around her, guards and prisoners alike, fell silent as they came up and beheld the dragons in their last resting place.

  A vein of coal, burning quietly in the far back of the room from deep within a split in the rocks, illuminated the sacred place with a soft orange light.

  Gefjun sent a prayer to the eternal ones, to Odin Allfather, begging his forgiveness for intruding on this place. She could hear others whispering prayers or crossing themselves, depending on their faiths, many bowing their heads or kneeling. It was wrong for them to be here. Gefjun wanted nothing more than to leave the dragons to their eternal rest and solitude, as was right.

  Then her eyes fell on one of the closest dragons … and she gasped.

  One of the dragons lying close to the front of the group was Corae.

  Corae was the guardian dragon of Skala they used to ride when she and her sword-friends were younger. Corae was a sweet-tempered dragon, red-scaled and loving. She’d gently bump her head against Gefjun’s side, and Gefjun would give her an apple. Only the sweet apples—Corae never liked the sour green apples.

  Gefjun smiled to think of it, and how she and Rjupa would ride Corae in their mock battles against Dyrfinna in those long-ago days. How she nuzzled them so that she’d almost knock them off their feet, or how she’d get so excited sometimes that she’d jump around like a dangerously gigantic dog.

  Corae had died in that terrible battle while she’d defended them against the invaders who came into Skala a long time ago. And now, here her body lay among the holy dead. She’d been borne here by the other dragons, to rest in this hall. And Gefjun’s heart ached for her old friend, as true-hearted as a dog, as intelligent as any human, and filled with secrets and age.

  But Nauma stepped forward into that holy, silent chamber, gawking at all the silent dead lying there,

  “My dragon army,” she said.

  20

  ROSE-LIGHT

  Gefjun’s skin crawled at the sound of that brazen voice intruding on this holy place of the dead.

  But then, Nauma did something even worse.

  She laughed.

  And the laughter echoed through that great hall.

  Fury swept over Gefjun. How dare Nauma laugh here? How dare she treat the bodies of the heroic dead, these great hearted dragons, like Corae, as her toys?

  “No,” Gefjun said.

  And her voice, too, echoed in that great hall.

  But the prisoners shouted “No!” all in a great voice.<
br />
  And that sound came roaring back a hundredfold, as if the dragons themselves were saying it.

  Nauma’s army surrounded the prisoners, and her soldiers had their swords, axes, and lances at the ready. Nearly every one of them held weapons that had been taken from the prisoners. They also wore the fine rings that had been stolen from the prisoners’ fingers, as well as their armor, their cloaks, their good boots, their warm furs.

  Gefjun’s jaw tightened. The prisoners held rocks, branches, and makeshift slings to defend themselves with. A lucky few held daggers that Nauma’s troops had not found. One had filled her pockets with rocks that she was going to throw at her attackers until they killed her.

  Nauma turned, naked greed in her eyes, a smile sliding over her face that looked strange and fake to Gefjun.

  “Look at all of you,” Nauma said quietly. “And here you are to see me rise as the Carcass Queen. Every one of you—yes, every one of you—will give me the power to do it. I’d say I appreciate your efforts, but unfortunately you’ll be dead by that time.”

  Gefjun’s voice floated through that silence. “Oh, you just try, you witch,” she said in a low, trembling voice. “You just try.”

  The puffin peeked out of her hair and squawked at Nauma.

  The prisoners burst out, shouting and cheering her words.

  Varinn’s hand was on her arm. He quietly said, so only she could hear, “Get ready.”

  And then he brought his hands together, palm to palm.

  “Hands. Now,” Gefjun said quietly.

  Everybody who could placed their hands on the king. Those outside that group placed their hands on them.

  The light inside his hands became brilliant as his magic pulled energy from everybody in the group. His head was bowed, watching the light, quietly singing under his breath, his face illuminated from below.

  Nauma powered up as soon as she saw that light come up in his hands. “How’d you get out of the spell?” she cried. “I put five locks on that one. Or six. I can’t remember.” Then she sang out a phrase and raised her hands.