Dolor and Shadow

by Angela Chrysler

  He inspected his work, adding an occasional swipe of the file where needed, ensuring the last of the nails were flush. “She hates to be sheltered. You know this. And putting a signet ring on her finger won’t force her to stay within the boundaries she’s been fighting against since she could crawl.” He paused to look over the finished job. “She’s probably escaped the palace again for a breath of fresh air.”

  “Perhaps,” Gudrun said, but clearly fretted nonetheless.

  “Alright.” Daggon slammed down the file and released the horse’s leg. With a comforted clop, Thor distributed his weight once more. “What aren’t you saying, wench?”

  Gudrun didn’t need the nudge. “She’s different.”

  “Hm,” he grunted. “The boy.”

  “Daggon. It’s not just the boy.”

  Gudrun dropped her shoulders. “He was a Ljosalfr.”

  “Who was?” Daggon asked.

  “The boy.”

  Daggon shook his head. “No, he wasn’t.”

  “He—”

  “Because if he is,” Daggon said, “I’ll kill him.”

  The captain ran his large hand over his face with an exhausted sigh. For a moment, he glanced up at the beams overhead.

  “Where’s Kallan?” he asked, returning his gaze to the woman.

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” Gudrun stepped closer, lowering her voice as her eyes widened with worry. “She isn’t anywhere, Daggon. This isn’t about the boy. Forget the boy,” she said when Daggon opened his mouth to speak. “Kallan isn’t well.”

  Daggon shrugged. “Kallan hasn’t been well since—”

  “Her Seidr is fading.”

  Cocking his head, Daggon glanced to Gudrun, waiting for a better explanation than that.

  “She has found a way to stop it all,” Gudrun said, lowering her hurried words even more. “She was cold. She wouldn’t respond.”

  “That’s Kallan,” Daggon said.

  “Hear me,” Gudrun said, pulling Daggon’s hands together. “I felt it. I saw it. She has slowed the Seidr to numb her grief.”

  Daggon shook his head. “You know I have no understanding of this, Gudrun.”

  She released Daggon’s hands.

  “The Seidr must flow. Without it, the body dies. It shapes. It grows, departing its host when the body dies to join with the Seidr around us. But the Seidr itself is always there, in a constant state. As much as we must breathe, the Seidr must flow.”

  Daggon’s brow wrinkled, understanding the urgency.

  “Kallan has found a way to change its state,” Gudrun said. “The grief she harbors grows and her grief rises. There is nothing left. The darkness is taking her. She empties everything into the shadows, feeling nothing just so she can breathe. But, in turn, it takes her will, and slows the Seidr.” Gudrun sighed. “In silence, I saw her screaming.”

  Thor snorted, stomping his hind leg, and Daggon patted the horse’s hindquarters.

  “Have you not taught her how dependent a Seidkona is to the Seidr?” he asked.

  “As dependent as we all are. She knows this, but she doesn’t know she’s doing it. Daggon. She’s too far beyond feeling to know she’s doing it.”

  Daggon nodded. “I’ll go to her.” He was on his feet. “Where is she?”

  “Ugh.” Gudrun threw her hands in the air. “We don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know? Ragnar,” Daggon called out to the streets where a lone soldier led his horse toward the stables.

  “Here,” Ragnar called back.

  “Find me Eilif and Aaric,” Daggon ordered.

  “Sir.” Ragnar nodded and left to relieve his horse and carry out his orders.

  Daggon took up the poker, pushing around the red and black coals in the forge. “Kallan had a page deliver the order of execution to me a day ago. When I asked to speak with her, she refused to see me.”

  “She’s going through with it?”

  Daggon nodded. “I believe so.”

  Gudrun grasped Daggon’s forearm. “A lifetime, Daggon,” she said. “All her life she has known nothing else. Her entire existence has been made of war and death. This is the first time she’ll have to face life without it. She should be happy, but instead she clings to it. As much as she hates it, she depends on it. She needs it. As long as the war is on, she keeps a part of Eyolf with her.”

  Daggon tossed the poker into the forge with a sharp clang.

  “What I can’t figure out is how far she’ll go to keep this war from ending,” Gudrun said.

  Daggon shuffled the last of the tools in order, rolling them into the leather to put away. “We can’t help her anymore, Gudrun. Not until she accepts her father’s death. She’s gone where we can’t follow.” With a sigh, he returned to the forge. “She has to find her own way back now.”

  * * *

  The sun settled behind the far reaches of the sea’s horizon, streaking the sky with orange and red light. Pines hugged and shaped a clearing where Kallan looked to the sea from the edge of the precipice. There the river began the Livsvann. Content to sit alongside Astrid, who munched the assortment of wild grass, Kallan watched until the last of the rays vanished beyond the sea.

  She couldn’t delay much longer. Below, the city burst with excitement over the evening’s apogee. Her absence would soon attract attention in which Gudrun would lead Lorlenalin’s staff in an uproarious manhunt for the missing queen. Regardless, Kallan didn’t move, deciding to extend her delay until they found her or the evening’s cold forced her inside.

  The horizon squeezed out the last of the light and extinguished the last of the day. Only the distant purples remained as night settled in. Kallan sighed, allowing an uneasy sick to churn her stomach. The end of the war, an era, and new beginning peered over the horizon and she could not stop it.

  Just a while longer.

  The world grew dark and winds blew cold as the clouds moved in from the sea. Kallan shivered and hugged herself against the chill. Stubbornly refusing to go back, she opened her palm in front of her.

  Streams of gold emerged from the tips of her fingers. Guiding the tiny threads, she called them out and back and turned them over, twisting them about at will, watching, amused with the threads of Seidr until she forgot her cold.

  The winds changed, a darkness descended and Kallan extinguished her Seidr. Whipping her attention to the shadows behind her, she stared into the trees with sharpened senses.

  Kallan narrowed her eyes and grasped the hilt of her dagger. With a flick of her wrist, she summoned a flame and looked deeper into the shadows. There, a large umbra lingered separate from the winds and forests. They were there. She had no doubts about it this time. She could feel them and they were growing closer, stronger, closing in like the walls of Lorlenalin.

  CHAPTER 22

  An eerie tension settled inside the keep where Gudrun stopped at the farthest west passage of the Great Hall. The voice of seventy thousand roared with jubilation in the courtyard and carried down Lorlenalin’s labyrinths. Their voices entered the keep, leaving a dulled riotous roar that prevented the silence the old Seidkona had been looking for.

  The servants, having covered the four long tables in meats and pies, sugared fruits, cheeses and barrels of ale and mead, had long since returned to the kitchens, but not before lighting the oblong fire pits between each table. The scent of roast pig filled the hall with the warmth of the flames. Fresh branches and wild berries decorated each torch, adding the fall pine to the collection of scents. Suspended above each table from the ceiling, the wrought iron wheels were alight with burning candles.

  Preparations were ready. The masses cried out. Formalities were in order. Everyone was dressed in their finest and waiting where they needed to be. Save for the queen, who she couldn’t find anywhere.

  Gudrun shifted a fatigued eye to the barren throne facing the two doublewide arches that decorated the south wall. Flanked by Lorlenalin’s high seat pillars, the queen’s seat waited
desolate and empty. Gudrun sighed, her heart heavy with worry, and pulled her attention from the hall.

  Up the backside steps, Gudrun trudged to the next floor, gathering her green silk skirts as she counted the stairs. Her foot scuffed each step until she reached the top and turned the corner toward Kallan’s bower. Gudrun pushed open the door and glided into the small maze of rooms that composed Kallan’s chambers. The scent of the sea forever filled the bower of white stone lavished in elegant woodwork. Today, it mingled delightfully with rose and lavender oils.

  Gudrun ignored the bath and the plethora of swords and daggers strewn about with the occasional collection of bundled heather or sage, the desk overflowing with powdered spices, minced herbs, and dried rose petals resting beside the mortar and pestle, which she recognized as her own. Gudrun made mental note to come back for it later.

  The private balcony doors were open wide, welcoming the view of the sea. The only gown lay carelessly on the floor. Several candles filled the room with a warm glow that ended at the bedchamber.

  Gudrun pushed open the door. The decor mirrored the sitting room, save for the large bed framed in rich, elegantly carved wood centered in the room between two side tables. There, at the seaside of the room, adorned in a gown of silver and blue and crowned with a headdress that dripped through her hair, Kallan stood with her back to the door.

  “You’ve caused quite a fright, this time,” Gudrun said upon entering the room. There was no reprimand in her voice.

  Kallan turned to the old woman. The white elding bracelet ordained her wrist and the scent of rose and lavender oils wafted from her skin. A circlet of silver and sapphire crowned her brow, but Gudrun’s eye followed the signet ring that caught the light.

  “Do they know yet?” Kallan asked, staring at the moon over the sea.

  “No,” Gudrun said. “They’ve given up looking in the most obvious places and are now searching the streets and the prisons.”

  Kallan shook her head. “I wouldn’t be in the prisons,” she whispered.

  “And why is that, Kallan?” Gudrun asked and watched Kallan unfurl her fingers in angst.

  A prolonged silence stretched between the women as Gudrun waited, knowing the exact moment when Kallan would move, desperate to feel anything.

  As if painfully numb to the stagnant nothingness, Kallan stared into the black waters of the Kattegat. The waves washed into the rock, beating at Lorlenalin’s base like the void that Gudrun knew pushed against Kallan, wearing her down little by little, carving out the rock one wave at a time until the foundation of the city conformed to the shape of the sea.

  “My goals are lost to the void that has taken me,” Kallan whispered. “That void. It is there I have banished everything to the darkness…there I can place everything that reminds me of that pain.”

  Kallan turned from the window and Gudrun watched as Kallan tried to still her quivering lip while holding back the wall of tears Gudrun knew would never fall.

  “I love this city and its people,” Kallan said. “I know this. But through all the blood and the war and the hate, I fear I’ve lost my love for Lorlenalin. I know I love Lorlenalin. I must. But I can’t feel it. And I don’t care that I can’t feel it.” Wide-eyed, Gudrun searched Kallan’s cold face. “If I go to him, if I see the king who killed my father, I fear I will lose the last of what little I still feel, even if it is hate.” Kallan closed her eyes. “I am so desperate to feel what seems so far from reach, but the pain is too great and I am faltering.”

  Gudrun dropped an ancient hand to Kallan’s shoulder, urging her to raise her eyes, but Kallan stood, visibly numbed by the weight of her burden.

  The old Seidkona breathed a weighted sigh.

  “I am alone in that room with no door,” Kallan breathed. “I’m lost to the black that’s keeping me. I can taste its foul stench. But I can not run. I can not fight. The last of my life is leaving me. I’m losing myself in the abyss. It’s taking my air…and I can not breathe.”

  “And what of the children, Kallan?” Gudrun asked and waited for Kallan to find her words.

  “I do so love those children. They alone are the last memory I have that bears me no pain or regret,” Kallan said. “They alone give me no reason to withdraw into the darkness.”

  “Then it is there you need to find you again,” Gudrun said, rising to her feet. “I will gather the men from their search.” Gudrun held Kallan in a warm hug. “I will send Eilif to you. He, after all, is the calmest of the three. I can give you five minutes,” Gudrun promised as she started for the door. “But Aaric’s temper is as hot tonight as Daggon’s patience is short. I can not keep them longer than that.”

  Kallan nodded, but Gudrun had already swept from the room, leaving the queen to compose herself in their wake.

  Kallan hugged herself against the chill that wasn’t there. For a moment, she had contemplated telling Gudrun about the Ljosalfr hunter and the Shadows that had chased her from the precipice that night. And just as quickly, she had closed the last of her heart within the cold that consumed her center.

  * * *

  Aaric spun on his heel as he continued his pacing along the entrance of the receiving balcony. As he walked, his polished sword clanked at his side. His dress clothes seemed only to enhance his threatening form, despite covering most of his tattoos.

  “Of all the jewels of Alfheim,” Aaric said, “she is our most precious. Everyone in Lorlenalin seems to know this, save for the jewel herself.” He turned on his heel to Gudrun. “You had to teach her the cloaking spell.”

  “She is trying to cope, Aaric,” Gudrun said.

  “The girl’s favorite pastime is running off and wreaking havoc through the city that would put her mother to shame and you teach her to vanish,” Aaric said.

  Daggon leaned against the arched frame of the balcony in his finest clothes, just out of sight of the crowd.

  “The girl is leading her people into a new era, and she’s doing it alone,” Daggon said.

  “She’s seen little else outside of the world Eyolf had given her, you know this,” Gudrun said.

  “Bah,” Aaric said, giving a sound as if he understood, but didn’t like it.

  “That girl was nearly born into war and lost a parent in each.” Daggon said, staring out into the masses. “The least you can do is to empathize with her.”

  “I empathize,” Aaric said. “But, emotions aside, she has to go forward whether she likes it or not, and we don’t have the time for the apprehensions of a whimsical girl. The New Era is here, now, and the queen can’t be found to welcome it.” Aaric released an audible sigh and forced himself to stop. “Has she changed her mind, at least?” he asked, peering at Gudrun, who was already shaking her head in answer.

  Aaric threw his arms in surrender.

  “She’s determined to kill him,” Daggon said. “She won’t budge. She plans to launch the celebrations tonight with the execution.”

  “It’s a mistake,” Aaric said. “An execution will lure the Dark One from his hole.”

  “I think that’s what she’s hoping for,” Daggon said, but Aaric stood at attention, drawing Daggon’s interests from the courtyard to the passage leading to Kallan’s bower. There, shadowed by Eilif, Kallan glided down the corridor in her gown of silver and blue.

  Daggon straightened his posture, tightened his jaw, and took her hands in his. “You look so much like your mother,” he said.

  Kallan weakly smiled as Aaric swept his arm around Kallan’s back.

  “Enough of this, there is no time. Lorlenalin is waiting,” he said, leading her onto the balcony alongside him.

  Seventy thousand voices rose up and engulfed Kallan as she stepped into the moonlight that bathed the courtyard in its splendor. Below, amid the masses, torches and lanterns blazed, adding to the gaiety that already infected the Dokkalfar gathered there.

  They roared in jubilation, eager to welcome the end of the age-long war. At the courtyard’s center, the fountain rose up from the
crowd where a platform and executioner waited to receive the king.

  The crowd quieted at the wave of Aaric’s hand and Kallan expanded her lungs as the last of the uproar died down.

  “Bring him out,” Kallan called.

  The Dokkalfar exploded with a tumultuous roar that filled the courtyard and rolled up Lorlenalin’s high towers as the first of the guards appeared. From high in her balcony, the crowd appeared to swallow the Ljosalfar king.

  Kallan’s insides flipped and she averted her attention to the moon, to Daggon, to Aaric beside her, anywhere but the king who killed her father. She refused to see him, who masked his grief with the blank stare he held firm through the crowd, his head cocked high with honor as he followed his guards to the platform to welcome his death. There he would find the merciful headsman that would relieve him of his failure.

  The cheering grew quieter. Although Kallan was certain the king had reached the platform, she still refused to look. An encouraging hand took hers and Aaric gave it a gentle squeeze. He nodded, urging her ahead. Only when the crowed quieted, only when Kallan was certain she could not prolong another moment’s delay, she forced her gaze to the platform below.

  Her spine tightened. Her breath ceased. She felt her hand go cold in Aaric’s grip.

  In the courtyard below, flanked by a pair of guards on the raised platform and shackled with elding, stood Rune, son of Tryggve, Lord and King of Gunir: the Ljosalfr hunter she had loved in the wood, if only for a moment.

  Stripped of his bow and quiver, Rune stared, his gaze secured, unwavering on Kallan. His black hair fell to his shoulders. But his eyes, his cold, silver-blue eyes wide with relief, held hers as if he could see beyond her iron wall buried within her void.

  A cold chilled her spine, but nothing could stop her head from spinning, leaving her battling to clear her mind. In the time it took for her to gasp and for the color to drain from her face, Kallan’s strength left her, her legs gave out, and the world went black.