Dolor and Shadow

by Angela Chrysler

  Zabbai.

  Swann’s death brought everything from Râ-Kedet flooding back.

  The bottle slipped from his fingers and struck the stone with a thud. Red mead flowed down the steps of Gunir. Bergen didn’t move to stop it.

  He could still smell the death on her.

  And then their mother—

  “Bergen.”

  Bergen sat up. Like he, Rune looked beaten down and broken beneath the grief that had penetrated the city. Everyone felt the effect of Swann’s death. No one was immune to that loss. And Caoilinn’s death, at least that was one they could explain.

  “Did you find him?” Bergen asked. The sound of his own voice felt foreign to him.

  Rune shook his head as he watched a drop of mead cling to the lip of the bottle still resting on the steps. “Geirolf is looking with Torunn,” Rune said. “They haven’t seen him since…”

  Rune dug his fingers into his eyes and Bergen stared at the city, too grief stricken to cry, too tired to sleep, too much death to live without hate.

  Hate.

  Bergen turned his thoughts to the fire that burned in his chest. That was something he knew and welcomed. He would need it where he was going.

  Bergen shoved his hand through his short black hair and rubbed the back of his neck, then took up the bottle from the steps and shoved the egg into his pocket.

  “And what of Mother?” Bergen asked, rising to his feet. “Has her body—” Bergen lost the words in his throat. There was no more room for grief, no more room to feel anything anymore, but hate.

  Rune shook his head and wearily climbed each step to the great oak doors of the keep. “According to Geirolf, Father’s orders were to leave her.”

  “We can’t just leave her,” Bergen said. The hate swelled again.

  “What will you have me do?” Rune said, turning back to his brother. “Swann is dead…and Mother. Father is missing. After finding their kin slaughtered…the hundreds that lay dead…” Rune rubbed his hand over his face. “The Dokkalfar will want answers. They won’t stand for this, nor should they.”

  Rune continued up the steps.

  “Why should I concern myself with their misery when it was their kin who started this?” Rune gazed down upon his brother. “When it was they who took our Swann from us?” Bergen asked.

  “Would you have war?” Rune said. “Would you see more dead? The Dokkalfar are strong.”

  “We have numbers.” Bergen took a step closer.

  “They have a witch, Brother. A Seidkona.”

  Bergen’s face fell as he assessed the Dokkalfar’s strength against their numbers.

  “One Seidkona doesn’t make an army,” Bergen said and turned away, but Rune’s hand flew to Bergen’s arm.

  “They have weapons,” Rune said. “Forged from a steel the likes I have never seen before. If there is war…” Rune shook his head and left the thought unfinished. “We can’t win this.”

  “There are others,” Bergen said. The rising darkness within him blanketed his face as his thoughts turned to the mountains.

  “What others?” Rune asked.

  “Rune. Bergen.”

  Torunn stood on the steps of the keep. Her dainty shoulders sagged from the insurmountable grief they all bore these past few days. Her long black hair, always so neatly twisted and fastened to the back of her head, was disheveled, making her appear almost crazed.

  “Your father,” she said. Her lip quivered. “He’s here.”

  * * *

  “I’ve never seen him like this,” Torunn whispered as Bergen and Rune entered the corridor behind her. “He came in, mumbling such madness. It’s like he’s gone. I can’t get him to talk to me. He won’t speak to Geirolf.”

  “Where is he, Torunn?” Rune asked as she wrung her hands together.

  Torunn stopped before their mother’s bower. The door was open just enough to make out the endless babble that accompanied the uttering of a mad man.

  Rune pushed on the door and entered with Bergen following close behind. The candles were unlit. The hearth was cold. The queen’s bower was dark save for the streak of bedroom light that spilled into the sitting room.

  The smell of death grew stronger as they drew closer to their mother’s bedchamber. The inane ramblings became clearer until they approached the threshold where they could hear the words.

  “Please forgive me…Caoilinn? Please…I didn’t mean to—I didn’t mean…”

  Rune pushed open the door. On the bed, his mother lay. And on the floor, by her side, sat his father. Weeping, Tryggve clutched his wife’s cold hand.

  “Swann…Sweet Swann,” he muttered, smiling at Caoilinn’s lifeless eyes. “With silver eyes…” he said. “So like yours. They glisten like pearls. Can you see them, Caoilinn? See them.” His lips quivered and his face turned down with anger. “Won’t you look at me? Look at me. Please look at me, Caoilinn. Please? It’s because I killed them, isn’t it? That you won’t talk to me?”

  Bergen stopped at the door beside Rune and both brothers watched, unable to speak.

  “I killed them…” Tryggve said. He stroked her golden hair. “I killed them all…every child…every mother…every soldier…I killed them all. I had to. They killed our Swann…our precious…” Tryggve pursed his lips. “Please talk to me, Caoilinn. Talk to me...Won’t you speak to me? You’re mad at me. Because I couldn’t…Forgive me? You must forgive me. Please forgive…”

  Bergen turned without a word and stomped back through the sitting room to the corridor. Down the steps into the Great Hall, he ran, not bothering a glance to the empty throne seated between the High Seat pillars engraved with wolves.

  His hands struck the great oak doors and Bergen ran down the steps, past the stream of mead into the courtyard to the stables around the west tower.

  “Bergen!”

  Bergen paid his brother no mind.

  “Bergen!” Rune was already closing in on his heels, but Bergen kept running. “Where are you going?”

  “To the mountains, Brother.”

  Rune stopped at the stable door as Bergen began saddling his horse.

  “The Dvergar,” Rune said. “Bergen. You can’t go. They’ll kill you.”

  “Their enemy is my enemy,” Bergen said. “They will help us.”

  “They will kill you!”

  Bergen stepped in so that he stood face to face with his brother.

  The soft sob at the stable door quelled the argument and drew their attention to Torunn. A beam of moonlight flooded her reddened face enough that they could see the fresh wave of tears. He knew that shadow that clung so desperately behind her eyes.

  “The king…” she spoke between sobs. “Your father…he…”

  Shaking her head, Torunn turned. Hugging her arms, she wandered back to the keep alone.

  “No!” Bergen screamed and lunged right into Rune’s fist. Bergen fell back, shook the initial shock off and returned a punch to Rune’s jaw. Before Rune could recover, Bergen slammed himself into Rune, who dropped his hands hard onto Bergen’s shoulders and held him there.

  “He isn’t!” Bergen growled and Rune dropped his brow to his brother’s. “Not Father! Not…” Bergen’s breath punched the air as his head spun as if desperate to find something to cling to.

  Zabbai.

  His chest throbbed with that pain that twisted his insides.

  Swann.

  Rage burned his skin from the inside out.

  Mother.

  “Breathe, Bergen,” Rune said.

  Now Father.

  “No!” Bergen shouted and shoved Rune back. “I will go to the mountains!”

  “Bergen, they will kill you,” Rune said.

  “I have no choice!”

  “You always have a choice.”

  Bergen shoved his hand through his hair again and again, each time he saw Zabbai then Swann then Caoilinn…

  “Do I?” Bergen gasped. “What choice is there? To stand here and watch you die? Do you call that a c
hoice?”

  “It’s a risk I must take as king,” Rune said.

  Bergen studied the silver-blue eyes so like his. Apathy was taking his brother, the king. Bergen knew the signs well. Rune, who spent his youth training for this day. His brother, Rune, King of Gunir. Choice and risk were two things Rune would never have the luxury to exercise.

  “I am not king,” Bergen said. “I don’t have to risk.”

  “There is another way,” Rune said. “War isn’t our only option.”

  “Isn’t it?” Bergen said. “And will you be here when the Dokkalfar find their dead and come to tear down our walls? Will you stand by, idle and ready to negotiate while they carve open your back and tear out your ribs?” Bergen shook his head. “No, Brother. I will not be one who stands and fights to die. You said yourself that their weapons are too great and they have a Seidkona.”

  “The Dokkalfar will come and we will defend ourselves,” Rune said.

  “They started this!” Bergen shouted. “When they took Swann’s life from her, they took the very spirit from this city. Just like Zabbai!”

  A familiar cold plunged itself through Bergen’s rage as he realized what he had just said.

  “Bergen,” Rune said.

  Bergen’s throat clamped shut and he turned his attention to his hate and the saddle.

  “Bergen, what happened in Râ-Kedet?”

  “I’m going,” Bergen grumbled.

  “Bergen.”

  Bergen raised his eyes to his brother and shook his head. “I can’t stay here.” He pulled himself into the saddle and pulled back the reins, steering the horse from the stall. “I’m going for help.”

  “Bergen.”

  “Goodbye, Brother.” And snapping the reins, Bergen sent his horse cantering out of the stables.

  “Bergen!”

  * * *

  Rune fell to the courtyard of stone.

  My sister. My mother. My father. My brother.

  His back hunched as a shadow crept in. He felt it like fingers twisting its darkness through him, cutting off his air. A cold chill, a dark pain remained in its wake like a wraith.

  Rune gasped against the pain, insurmountable pain that made it hurt to breathe. His body shook as he battled back the shadow that threatened to take him.

  And why shouldn’t it?

  He stared at the stone. He wanted to die, to rise up and kill, to avenge.

  This shadow.

  He watched it twist its ugly darkness into his mother in a matter of moments until she succumbed to its plague, its vile filth. He watched it consume his father, who rose up and slaughtered the children. And now it took Bergen.

  “Rune?”

  Rune ignored Geirolf’s quaking voice.

  “Rune.”

  This is how it will be: the shadow and me.

  “Your Majesty.”

  The title pulled Rune’s attention back to Gunir. “What is it, Geirolf?”

  No answer.

  Rune pulled himself up from his knees while wrestling back the shadow that had beaten him down to subservience.

  “Geirolf. What is it?” Rune said and looked to Geirolf.

  As white as his hair, Geirolf stood sick with fear, his attention not on the west where Bergen had fled or on the new king beside him, but the Dokkalfar army that filled the horizon to the south.

  Eyolf.

  At the bottommost depths of Rune’s being, a fire sparked to life and he raised his eyes to the horizon. The shadow within swelled, urging him to fight, to avenge, and to spill the blood of those who killed his sister. That was what the shadow wanted.

  Rune focused all his energy on the flame that churned his insides.

  The shadow did this. The shadow did all of this.

  “Your Highness?” Geirolf asked.

  Rune looked at Geirolf and raised his head with the command taught to him by his father. “To war,” Rune said as the Dokkalfar war horn sounded.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 8

  995th year after Baldr

  Olaf listened to the sweet voice flowing down the limestone cave lit with torches. The usual stench of bat feces, ammonia, and dampness was strangely absent, just as it had been a moon ago when he had last visited the Seidkona's domicile. Nevertheless, he pulled his fur and hide coat tighter around broad shoulders made wide from three decades of swordplay. His long, blond beard protruded from the fur lapels of his coat as his blue eyes scanned the darkness.

  He proceeded as cautiously now as he had then, each step landing him in the small stream that trickled its way deeper into the cave. A misplaced step caused him to favor his left leg. The wound that nearly cost him his life a month ago had not yet fully healed. When the faint glow of firelight reached him from around a sharp turn, relief relaxed him.

  The scent of stew teased Olaf’s appetite when he turned the corner and ducked to enter the small, shallow room. Accessories, furniture, and décor dressed the limestone cave, making it into a proper home.

  In the center of the room, a small fire crackled beneath a large soapstone pot fixed on an iron tri-stand. The Seidkona had shoved a table and chair against the cave wall along with barrels of food. Herbs and spices hung on a rack she positioned in place from the ceiling, although he couldn’t quite see how. Tapestries and hides dressed the walls to hide the jagged façade and warmed the feel of the room. The Seidkona had a handful of candles burning on the table between two empty wooden bowls.

  A large hide hanging from the cave wall served as a door to what Olaf could only imagine was a second room as comfortable as the first. It was there he could hear her voice glide almost like a spell that fogged his mind and threatened to leave him senseless. He found himself fighting it to preserve his angst. He didn’t have to wait long for her voluptuous frame to emerge from that passage.

  “You came back.” A pleased smile pulled the corner of her red lips. The firelight danced in her round, gold eyes and, for a moment, he forgot to answer.

  “I did.”

  She tilted her head and Olaf watched her long, black hair fall down her curves where his eyes lingered. He wasn’t sure if her song had stopped, but still found it hard to focus. The air was heavy with spell.

  “Now you believe?” she asked.

  Her question jogged his memory.

  “You said my men would betray me…that I would be near death.”

  A pleased smirk pulled the corner of her red lips.

  “And you were,” she replied.

  Olaf nodded. “I was.”

  He recalled the raid a moon ago soon after he had challenged her skill. He still felt the laugh in his throat when she had warned him that his men would betray him. Not a day later, they turned on him and he barely escaped with a wounded leg. He almost lost the leg. An arrow had nicked the artery. That laugh now felt like bile stuck in his throat. He also recalled her other words of prophesy.

  “You said that I would be a great king,” Olaf said.

  “I said you would be renowned. Not great,” she answered, walking to the fire where the stew bubbled.

  Olaf stepped closer and felt the spell-air thicken as he watched her bring the ladle to her lips.

  “My father…”

  She sipped.

  “I know who your father was.” She sipped again, then stirred the stew. “And his father before him.” She hung the ladle on the lip of the cauldron and looked to Olaf’s blue eyes and long blond hair, so much like his father’s father. She looked at him as if she was seeing far more than a usurped king on a broken throne.

  “I know who you are, son of Trygg, son of Olaf, son of Fairhair.”

  Olaf stiffened and she smiled.

  “Yes, I know about Fairhair and how he killed the great High King of Alfheim and Viken.”

  Lodewuk. That elf had done well to ensure Alfheim remained under the rule of his kin, the Ljosalfar in Gunir.

  “And now you wish to reclaim what once was yours,” the woman said.

  “I wish to reclaim m
y father’s throne,” Olaf answered.

  She grinned. “Liar.”

  The spell-air thickened as she moved around the cauldron to stand closer to Olaf. Her head reached his shoulders. “You wish to know about your beloved. Your Geira.”

  Olaf’s back straightened at the sound of his wife’s name.

  “You wish to know what killed her,” the Seidkona said.

  “She was young,” Olaf said, sharper than he had intended. He couldn’t afford to anger the witch, and forced his voice steady. “And healthy…”

  The Seidkona tipped her head in thought as if delighted with unearthed knowledge in which to savor. “And with child it would seem.”

  Olaf tried to shake his head. No one had known about the child. “My Geira didn’t just die.”

  “No. It would seem she didn’t.”

  She turned her back and circled the fire, taking the spell-air with her. He felt his tension return.

  “Tell me what to do,” he said.

  The Seidkona stared. He felt her eyes on him as if she had undressed him and had seen every flaw, every scar, every secret he harbored. He remained unmoved, unbroken as she gazed long and hard. When she spoke at last, it was with careful precision.

  “Seidkona have unearthed the secrets to a forgotten power that sleeps. It is best for everyone if this power remains…” She pensively sucked on her bottom lip. “Forgotten. One of them carries a pouch.”

  Olaf furrowed his brow. “All Seidkona carry a pouch.”

  The witch grinned.

  “This Seidkona carries a pouch that holds an endless supply of Idunn’s apples.”

  Olaf’s mouth fell open.

  Here in Midgard. Idunn’s apples.

  “Idunn…” His mouth watered with greed. If he had had those apples, his leg would have healed weeks ago. Not just healed, but completely restored as if there had been no wound at all.

  “You know what those apples can do,” she said.

  Olaf nodded, swallowed the mouthful of saliva and answered, “I do.”