Dangerous Talents

by Frankie Robertson

  “She believes her story, and so Father Ragnar believes. She is likely deluded, but that makes her no less dangerous. It makes no sense that Freyr would bring one lone unbeliever across the Rainbow Bridge. It’s not as if she is a hero and there is some great task to perform.” Wirmund grimaced. “But Loki might.”

  “Loki was stripped of his powers,” Dahleven protested. “He won’t rise till Ragnarok.”

  Wirmund shrugged.

  Finding the Hidden Talents would be a heroic task. But would Freyr want them found? Enough to bring Celia over the Bright Road?

  *

  “Wake up, Lady Celia.” Angrim shook Cele’s shoulder.

  Cele awakened with a start, heart pounding. For a moment she didn’t recognize the dimly lit stone room or understand why Angrim was here, rousing her after too little sleep. Then it all came rushing back. Jorund. Home. Her betrayal of Dahleven’s trust.

  Cele clenched her teeth on the pain that thought caused. I had to do it.

  She crawled from the thin feather bed and pile of blankets that Jorund had provided in an alcove off the main room. He soon arrived, striding in through the narrow archway.

  “I trust you slept well, Lady Celia?” Jorund gave her a half bow and smiled warmly into Cele’s eyes.

  She hadn’t. Her dreams had been troubled by ominous shadows, and she’d awakened once to see Jorund speaking with a dark figure she couldn’t make out.

  “I’ve had a small breakfast prepared for you.” He glanced at Angrim and back to Cele. “I regret I must urge you to hasten. We must be away ere long.” He drew Cele’s arm through his and escorted her to the table at the far end of the room. Angrim hooked her hand through his other elbow and he turned to smile briefly at her before returning his regard to Cele. He didn’t seem upset that it had been Angrim who’d told him where to find the Staff rather than Cele.

  The table was laden with several dishes. Cele stared at the distinctive black on white Mimbres-like design. The style was typical of certain southwestern tribes in the eleventh through fourteenth centuries. Is this Tewakwe pottery?

  Appealing aromas made Cele’s mouth water, pushing all other thoughts aside. Jorund led her to a chair near the head of the table opposite Angrim’s. She was about to sit down when a familiar face caused Cele to draw a sharp breath and tense in alarm.

  “What is it, my lady?” Jorund asked.

  Cele’s arm was pointed like a lance at Harve. “What’s he doing here? I thought you said he was one of Neven’s men.”

  “My lady?” Jorund’s voice was beautiful, even when shocked.

  “He’s one of the men who kidnapped me!” She started around the table toward Harve. Cele wasn’t sure what she intended to do when she reached him, but she was sure he wouldn’t like it.

  Jorund put a light restraining hand on her arm and stepped forward. “Is this true?” His outrage reverberated in the stone chamber. “Have you betrayed me to Neven? Did you try to harm this woman?”

  Harve’s eyes widened and he stepped back, limping. “No, my lord. I would never! I didn’t hurt her!”

  “How can I believe you when this Lady accuses you to you face?”

  “I did just as you said!”

  Cele’s anger boiled over at his lies. “He tried to rape me! He was going to kill me!”

  Jorund turned to Cele. “I deeply regret what happened, Lady Celia. He will be punished.”

  “But I only did what you told—”

  “Silence!” Jorund roared, backhanding Harve into the wall.

  Cele jumped at Jorund’s sudden violence to the lying coward, but didn’t lament it. She wanted to do the same, and more.

  “You.” Jorund gestured to two of his guards. “Take him out of my sight and deal with him.” They each grabbed an arm and dragged Harve into the tunnel.

  Jorund turned to Cele. “Do you wish to witness his punishment?”

  Cele’s anger urged her to say yes, but then she remembered the servant with the missing fingers and something in her quailed. “What are you going to do to him?”

  Jorund shrugged. “For betraying me, he deserves death.”

  As much as Harve deserved it, the summary judgment shocked her out of her fury. “That’s…extreme.”

  “It is the same as his accomplices received.”

  Cele remembered their bodies lying still on the floor. She hadn’t felt a shred of regret for their deaths, and Harve had come after her a second time. It was a miracle she’d escaped him. Who knew how many women he’d attacked in the past, or would in the future? “Do I have any say?”

  Jorund inclined his head. “Would you have me show mercy?”

  “If he’d attacked me, I’d have his balls!” Angrim declared.

  The other men had been caught in the act, killed in the heat of battle. There was no doubt in Cele’s mind that Harve had meant to murder her after making her suffer. “I don’t know.”

  Jorund’s eyes softened. “You have a woman’s natural delicacy. Would it be better if I merely make him wish he were dead?” he asked without apparent irony.

  Cele grimaced. “No.”

  Jorund turned to the guard waiting by the tunnel where Harve had disappeared. “Flog him.”

  What little Cele knew of flogging came from movies. She feared the reality would be even worse, but at least a man wouldn’t die by her choice.

  “You never answered, my lady. Will you witness his punishment?”

  “No, I don’t want to watch.” It was enough to know Harve would get what he deserved. She didn’t want to feel any squeamish, softhearted sympathy for him.

  *

  Dahleven followed Thora though a narrow door. She led him down servants’ corridors and up winding steps and back down steep staircases to a remote part of the castle. With every step, he felt time slipping away. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been in this part of Quartzholm, even when he’d explored the hidden corners as a boy. If not for Ragni’s assurance of Thora’s loyalty and the fact that she’d cared for him in the nursery, he might almost wonder if she were leading him into trouble.

  Of course she’s leading me into trouble. And he was going with his eyes wide open. He was going to meet someone who would perform unsanctioned magic for him. He was looking for a witch to help him find a woman who may have had a hand in stealing the Staff of Befaling. If that isn’t trouble, I don’t know what is.

  How did he get to this point: the heir to Quartzholm, the son of the Kon, sworn to protect his people and uphold the teachings of Baldur, seeking to use forbidden arts?

  I must be mad. But it was the only way to find Celia.

  Wirmund was right. She was dangerous. If anyone had told him two weeks ago that he’d be conspiring with a Daughter of Freya to flout traditions guarded by the priesthood, he’d have laughed himself sick.

  But Celia had changed everything. He’d failed to protect her; he couldn’t abandon her while there was a still a chance.

  Wirmund had said he had no magic that could help in this situation. He could break the power of the amulet if he had it, but the Overprest had no ritual to find the trail that the amulet had concealed. Thora offered him a tool and hope, and Dahleven couldn’t refuse it. He might be mad, but his heart compelled him forward, following Thora through obscure passages.

  The room he stepped into was sparsely appointed, holding only a table, a few chairs, a few boxes, and a cot. A pretty, dark-haired woman sat at the table. She rose when he entered.

  “This is Lady Saeun,” Thora said. “She can show you what you need to know.”

  He didn’t recognize her. She must be the daughter of a minor Lord, here for the Althing. “Lady Saeun.” He nodded his head slightly, showing the minimum of courtesy.

  She curtsied deeply, and said, “Thank you for coming, my lord. Please be seated.”

  Lady Saeun didn’t fit his expectations of what a witch should look and act like. Feeling somewhat churlish, Dahleven sat at a plain wooden table in a high-backed chair. He searched Sae
un’s heart-shaped face. “How can you help find Lady Celia?”

  Saeun smiled nervously and glanced at Thora before answering. “I can show you where she will be, my lord…I can try to, I mean.”

  “How?” Dahleven demanded.

  Saeun flinched. Thora put her arm around her and said, “Don’t let Lord Dahleven unsettle you, dear heart. You can do this.” She looked sharply at him. “Let her do her work, my lord. Ask your questions later.”

  Saeun brought a large box to the table. From it, she withdrew a hairbrush bearing strands of Celia’s yellow hair, her waist-pack, and the torn, bloodstained robe she’d worn during her first abduction. Dahleven’s jaw tightened at the sight of it. Saeun set aside the box and put a shallow obsidian bowl in the midst of these items. Runes decorated the inside lip of the smooth, black vessel. Then she unstopped a glass bottle and poured its contents into the bowl.

  Dahleven gaped as a small treasure in quicksilver rippled in the vessel before him. Saeun closed her eyes and lifted her head, stretching her arms out to her sides, palms outward. Then she began to chant in the priests’ tongue.

  A tingling raced over his skin in time with the rhythm of Saeun’s words. Dahleven jerked and almost moved to stop her, a woman, from speaking the words reserved to the priests. Thora caught his eye and he stopped. What had he expected would happen here? Of course Saeun was breaking with tradition—and so was he. He listened and waited as the air grew thick, charged with the magic Saeun called upon.

  Saeun turned her palms inward and swept them toward her breast three times, as though gathering something in over the bowl and its liquid treasure. The prickling of Dahleven’s flesh pulsed and grew with each sweep of her arms. Then she bent and blew on the surface of the quicksilver. Dahleven felt a rush of cold wind, and the liquid metal smoothed like glass.

  Saeun startled him by speaking a word he understood. “Look,” she commanded.

  Dahleven peered at the surface of the silvery liquid. It no longer reflected a distorted image of the room in which he sat. Instead, he saw a long, narrow cavern, unshaped by human hands or Talents.

  Dahleven almost looked away. Danger lurked in such places; they were the province of the Dark Elves, and who was to say they couldn’t somehow reach across this scrying? But his need was too great. He peered into the bowl.

  The vision opened onto a larger space where the floor was smoothed by Talent, but the walls and ceiling had been left unchanged. No single point of light illuminated the space, yet he could see the rough walls glittering with crystals. Round and oblong orbs of rough stone protruded from the walls or lay on the floor. There were hundreds of them, of various sizes. A few of them were broken, their crystals dark. Is this where the Great Talents are Hidden? To one side of the image, Fender slumped against a wall, blood slicking the side of his face.

  Dahleven grimaced. Was this the place as it would be, or might be? He’d already lost several good men. He knew he would lose more; it was inevitable—such was the nature of battle. But he didn’t want the surety of it.

  In the background, shadowed figures wavered indistinctly in a way that made his skin crawl, but closer stood a man with his back toward Dahleven, and with him was Celia, her face contorted with pain.

  “No!” Dahleven hardly knew he spoke aloud.

  The image flickered. He memorized the room, taking note of details. A moment later the image grew dark and the natural reflective surface of the quicksilver returned.

  Dahleven blinked and looked up at Saeun. Her face was sweaty and gray. Thora helped her to sit, then poured her a cup of red wine and held it to her lips, wisely not trusting the young woman’s shaky hands to hold it steady.

  In a moment, Saeun pushed the cup away and looked shyly at him. “I hope you saw something helpful, my lord.”

  “You don’t know what the magic revealed?”

  “No. The image was for you alone.” Her voice was breathy and weak.

  “You said this is where Lady Celia will be? Why not where she is now?”

  “Lady Celia is some hours ahead of you, is she not? By the time you Pathfind your way there she will be gone again, where no Tracker may know. With this knowledge, you may find her, perhaps even get ahead, if your Talent shows you a shorter way than she travels.”

  “How long do I have? How far ahead did this vision look?”

  Saeun’s eyes fluttered and she slumped sideways. Thora kept her from falling to the floor until Dahleven came around the table and lifted the young woman in his arms.

  “The visions seldom see more than a day ahead,” Thora said.

  Less than a day, then. Not much time. Dahleven laid Saeun on the cot and looked at Thora. “Does she need a Healer? I can summon Ghav. By my order, he’ll not reveal her.”

  He saw approval in Thora’s eyes and felt perversely pleased by it.

  “No, my lord. She knows her limits; she’s only tired. But ritual magic is not undertaken lightly.”

  Dahleven nodded. Reflexively, he said, “Perhaps that’s why it’s reserved for the priests.”

  Thora’s lips tightened. “If we’d left you to Father Wirmund’s offices, you’d be no wiser. The priests know many things, my lord, but they cling to Tradition like some women cling to husbands who beat and bloody them, afraid to free themselves. The priests are afraid to choose their own way, so they let Tradition do it for them. It keeps them ignorant and they call it virtue, and they try to keep others ignorant as well. It’s time to move forward.” Thora laid her hand on Dahleven’s arm. “With the Kon’s approval, and the sanction of the priesthood, we could do so more safely.”

  Wirmund’s approval of this kind of magic was as likely as an open pass at mid-winter, and Neven’s support could never be open and unreserved, not and remain Kon. He apparently knew of and tolerated Thora’s covert use of the runestones, but he couldn’t afford to support unsanctioned magic.

  Dahleven remembered the fear on the face of the woman Ozur had banished for six months. Neven needed to remain Kon if he was to bring about the kind of changes necessary to protect woman like her. He had to maintain respect and goodwill among the Lords, Jarls, and priests to do that, even if doing so meant making compromises that left a vile taste in his mouth.

  “Tradition isn’t imposed only by the priests,” Dahleven said. “It binds us all. Beliefs can’t be changed so easily.” He held up a hand to forestall Thora’s angry retort. “But your assistance today will no doubt help. Have patience. And hope that what Lady Saeun revealed to me makes a difference.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY~FOUR

  A man brought trays of fruit and cheese and bread to the table. Cele wondered if she was supposed to serve Jorund, but Angrim was sitting to his right and did that task with an air that it was her right to do so. The food smelled delicious, but Cele no longer had an appetite. What did Harve mean, “I did as you said?”

  He was just trying to save his skin, she answered herself.

  The sudden crack of the whip against flesh and Harve’s muffled cries echoed back into the chamber. Cele flinched but refused to feel pity for him, using the memory of his grasping hands ripping her robe to block out his screams. She chewed a bite of the bread that had smelled so wonderful just a moment before. It tasted like dust now, settling in her stomach like a stone.

  Eirik bustled in. Cele stared. He’s part of this, too? The tall, slender skald strode into the room, bowing deeply to Jorund and again to the two women, setting the beads in his long, thin braids to clacking. “Well met, my lord! And well timed.” He looked pointedly at the trays of food until Jorund gestured for him to take a seat. An empty place waited for him at the table; obviously he’d been expected.

  Cele remembered Eirik’s Talent for Persuasion and Thora’s doubts about his reading of the runestones. She tried to keep her face neutral, though she was wary.

  Eirik poured himself a cup of pale wine and smiled at Cele across the table, apparently unconcerned by the sounds of Harve’s punishment. “I see you recognized yo
ur opportunity when it came, Lady Celia. Lord Jorund will be a good friend to you.”

  Cele’s skin tingled with a sensation similar to circulation returning to a limb that been asleep. She nodded slowly, distracted by the feeling. “He’s offered to help me get home.”

  “And so he will,” Eirik said. “Lord Jorund is a man of honor.”

  Again Cele’s skin tingled. Was that the effect of the amulet Thora had given her? Was Eirik trying to use his Persuasion on her? How much is his endorsement worth, if Thora’s right about him lying? Cele tried to ignore the thought. Jorund’s offer of help had nothing to do with Eirik’s truthfulness.

  The cutting crack of the whip ceased. Harve moaned and wept.

  “Hasten your meal, Eirik,” Jorund said. “We must be away soon.”

  “Why such haste, my lord?” Eirik protested. “The search for Lady Celia is frustrated. The Trackers have found no trace of her. Lord Dahleven—”

  “Lord Dahleven is a clever man, and will do all in his power to pursue his father’s will. And Neven will not be pleased to lose his grasp on Lady Celia.” Jorund rose. “Come, we’re going.”

  *

  Dahleven and his eight men moved briskly and quietly, their leather byrnies creaking softly. Moccasins, worn in place of their usual boots, muffled their footfalls. They’d been on the march for eight hours or more, with only two short breaks. Dahleven carried a lantern turned low to conserve oil and minimize the risk of discovery by those they sought.

  He’d left Quartzholm in able hands. Gudrun commanded everyone’s respect and loyalty, and the Warden of the Guard would do her will without question. Even Gris and Father Wirmund would obey her, if reluctantly. He regretted the need to abandon his charge, but his choice had been clear: the potential threat of the Hidden Talents being Found was more serious than whatever Quartzholm might face.