The sporadic flat stretches of land that would allow them to rest came too infrequently, adding to the hostile strain between them. On occasion, a misplaced step sent them sliding into the water. Only once did Rune extend a hand to Kallan, who slapped it away mumbling something akin to ‘murderer.’
Tension brewed as the impending argument thickened, leaving them both bitter and vile when they arrived at a wide, but shallow, river that interrupted their path.
Rune looked to the sun suspended over the lake then to the northeast where the river flowed. Ahead, the water spanned seventy-five paces, though appearing shallow enough to cross. Without a word, he tugged on Astrid’s reins.
“What are you doing?” Kallan asked behind him.
“Halvard said the river would lead south,” Rune said, still making his way toward the water.
“But he didn’t say anything about there being a river before then,” Kallan said, clutching Freyja’s bridle.
“I don’t know how you’d know that, seeing as how you were too busy making plans with the whelp.”
“What difference does it make what I do with my whelp?” Kallan asked.
“It doesn’t.” Rune returned his eyes to the slippery stones submerged in the water. “But it does matter what that whelp does with my prisoner.”
“I am not your prisoner.”
“Well, I’m not yours,” Rune said, spinning around in time to see Kallan heave like a dragon ready to scorch the earth.
“I will not follow you blindly,” she said.
“Blindly?” Rune barked an unstable laugh. “You have done nothing blindly since we started this, princess.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Foolishly, weakly, loudly maybe, but never blindly,” Rune said.
“It’s because of you we’re here at all,” Kallan said. “I won’t follow you!”
“How is that?” Rune asked, too angry to stop pushing his way through the river.
“You killed my father.” Rune turned to her. “You took me from Lorlenalin, and I’ll not follow you all the way to Gunir!”
Rune arched a brow as the river’s babble filled the silence.
“Alfheim,” Kallan corrected.
Rune heaved a patient breath, his grimace holding strong.
“I am going south,” he said, “and Astrid is coming with me.”
Without another word, he guided Kallan’s horse across the river, leaving Kallan to stay or follow. A moment later, with her slew of curses mumbled under her breath, Kallan entered the river behind him.
The flat plain on the other side of the river was more than enough to convince them to stop. They watered the horses and rested their feet while eating a quick meal composed of apples, flat bread, and mead. After a handful of silent sneers, they continued with only the whine of the third flask stopper to break their silence.
Around the water with the curve of the lake, Kallan and Rune made their slow way south then west along the shores. When, at last, the water glistened with the light of the setting sun, the forest ended, and the southern river flowed like glass. Exhausted, their path veered from the lake and Kallan and Rune began putting distance between them and the lake in Selabu.
Long after the day’s end, and too tired to grimace, they, at last, settled along the bank of the river and made camp, without so much as an insult.
Empty and forgotten, the third flask lay among their bags as Kallan stared up at the crescent moon. With every image that plagued her imagination, her sanity slipped further from rational. Huffing, she flipped to her side. From across the fire, light spread up and over Rune, spilling over his back.
Just like Emma, she thought and again sorted through endless variations of Rune and his Englian strumpet.
Hatred swelled, clawing her insides with a maddening rage that urged her to march back to Nidaros and kill the wench while he slept peaceably, free of the demons he beset upon her.
How dare you sleep while I lay tormented?
The words rent all thoughts, stirring awake other memories—barely forgotten memories—of her father as he lay dying and her blood-soaked hands. A wave of hate washed over her, abating all thoughts of Emma, and Kallan gazed at the Ljosalfr asleep beside her. A new darkness consumed her and the eye of the dragon awakened.
Dead men breed no pain.
Her eye settled on the black and reds of Gramm’s pommel.
While he sleeps…he wouldn’t even know…and I could return and conquer Gunir.
Throwing off the blankets, Kallan grabbed the nearest saddlebag and rose to her feet. With full force, she threw the satchel into the back of Rune’s head, jerking him awake.
Before he could turn and assess, before he could comprehend, Kallan took up his sword and unsheathed Gramm, its blade ringing out as if sounding off the opening note to his dirge.
Within two long strides, she came to stand over the Ljosalfar king and gave her battle cry. Seeing the blade turned down, Rune visibly braced for the sword to penetrate his heart as Kallan dropped all her weight onto him and plunged Gramm into the earth.
Blocking her face in shadow, her hair hung free as she heaved. Blood flowed where the blade nicked Rune’s ear. Against the black of Gramm’s hilt, Kallan’s white fists shook. The fire popped as Rune watched.
“Far too long I’ve dreamt of my sword stained with the blood of your people.” Kallan said. “Too long I’ve sought your death. Too long I’ve moved to strike. Even as you pulled me from the rancid darkness and I lay dying, did I plan to kill you and avenge my father’s death. Even now, all I have to do is strike. At the end of it all, I must decide. Should I kill you? Should you die?”
Rune watched, ready for whatever choice she made next.
“I should kill you,” Kallan whispered, “and watch your blood run with the blood of my people. If I kill you, all my troubles end. And I go home to Lorlenalin, my father’s death avenged.”
“And if you’re wrong,” Rune said, “if it was another who stole your father’s life, leaving him to die dishonorably upon the fields of Alfheim, whose life then will you have avenged by wrongfully killing me?”
The heavy burden of understanding weighted down her eyes, and, all at once, there was doubt.
“What wars may come by staining your hands with my blood?” Rune’s hush swept through her. “What lies then will you tell yourself once you’ve lied to your people? Can you risk being wrong, Kallan? Can you risk all the lives that will die and mine, all from your mistake?”
“Why did you save me?” she breathed. “Why did you kill my father only to save me?”
“I didn’t kill him,” he whispered.
“I can’t believe you.” Her voice wavered as the words caught in her throat.
“A king’s head is worth its weight in gold,” Rune said. Her eyes widened with unshed tears as she recalled Aaric’s words to her. “Name your price,” Rune said.
The back of her throat burned as she forced all other thoughts aside.
“Crawl through Svartálfaheim,” she said, “into the depths of Hel, beyond the roots of Yggdrasill, and bring him home to me.” Kallan stifled a sob. “That is my price.”
The chill from Rune’s eyes was gone, replaced instead with a pity that reached down into her and shook the walls she had built on anguish.
“Find the father you took from me,” Kallan bade, “and restore him unto me.”
“I can’t,” he whispered thickly.
Kallan’s dagger was suddenly unsheathed and pressed against his throat.
“Please.” The word tripped on a gasp. A tear slipped from her eye. “If I let you live,” she said, “please give my father back to me.”
He visibly swallowed against the blade.
“Please,” she said.
With a thwit of an arrow, Kallan and Rune stared at a shaft protruding from the ground beside them.
“Don’t move,” came the aged, gruff voice of a man from behind. “The next one is aimed for your heart.”
> Kallan shifted her weight.
“Don’t move,” he said again, but his voice wavered with doubt and Kallan rose to her feet. Rune stood beside Kallan where the fire’s light bathed them in orange and gold.
Hunched before them, the beaten, aged frame of an old man stood. A scraggly, graying black beard covered his face. His mottled hands shook with an unsteady draw of a withered bow.
“You’re on the wrong side of the Raumelfr, Alfar.” Fear shifted the old man’s eye. Fear shook his hands as he pointed the bow at Rune and then Kallan. “There’s nothing but death on this side. What are you doing here?”
“We need to get to the Raumelfr,” Rune said, making no movement. Blackened from grief, the old man studied the tapered ears and grand height of the Alfar with hardened eyes.
“Raumelfr, eh.” His jargon slurred with exhaustion as he lowered his weapon. “You’re a few days out of your way if you’re looking for the Raumelfr.”
Casting an eye over their camp, the old man seemed to assess their accommodations, lingering until his gaze fell to the pendant fastened at Kallan’s neck.
It was a long while before he spoke again, unable to tear his eye from the tri-corner knot.
“You need food? Shelter?” He grumbled the words more than asked, and slumped away. His back, too long laden with burden, arched under the weight. “Come with me,” he growled and was on his way through the thick of the wood from whence he came.
The Alfar collected their things and extinguished the fire.
“I heard a scream. It’s why I came running,” the old man said thickly as they joined him. “I’m Bern.” He didn’t bother to ask for their names.
Away from the path of the river, through the dark of the forest, they marched, led by the ramblings of the old man. Dead branches on the ground cracked beneath his feet as he stomped, clearing a somewhat crude path.
“I was sitting with my wife,” he tried to say. “Well, maybe it’s luck that I found you…maybe in time,” he muttered.
“Is someone sick?” Kallan asked, eager to forget her own grievances.
With each hollow step, his torchlight flickered.
“Not sick.” Bern pulled back a branch. “Dying.”
The old man said no more until they reached the end of the wood where the land stretched out ahead beneath the moonlight. Black shadows spanned a vast clearing, throwing silhouettes into the dark. Mounds were strewn about mingled with barren land that seemed to end at the base of a mountain.
In the distance, through the mounds, the only sign of life spilled through the slip-shod planks, blanketed in peat moss and lichen in what was the dilapidated remains of a long-house. Orange streaked the black of night where the faintest cries carried through the air.
“My wife, Halda,” Bern said. Grief shook his tone.
“What’s wrong with her?” Rune asked as they made their way into the distance.
“It’s Svenn, our son,” he said, his voice cracking.
Kallan looked at Bern as he forced himself to explain.
“Nearly a fortnight ago, Olaf came through, demanding we denounce Freyja. When we refused…” His words were lost to his grief.
Bern rushed through his tale while he still had the nerve to speak. “But our boy…he didn’t die right away…and now he has the fever. We can’t…It would be kinder to kill him, but Halda won’t…She has hope, you see.”
The sobbing was nearer as they came to stand before the dilapidated remnants of a charred longhouse starting to fall in on itself. Releasing Astrid’s reins, Kallan pushed on what she could only guess had been a door.
The familiar stench was overpowering. Metallic and rancid, mingled with the strong scent of feces. The smell hit her stomach and she gagged back a mouthful of bile, knowing what it was.
Black blood soaked the charred, wooden planks. A two-week-old trail led to the wall where rows of wide benches flanked the sides of the longhouse. The central fire pit burned with glowing embers that cast shadows of orange and red over the black and ash, and on the wall, kneeling beside a small, pale boy about thirteen winters old, Bern’s Halda hovered.
Waxen flesh was pulled taut over the boy’s skeletal face as his brown eyes, glazed with death, stared beyond his mother to a point unseen by the living. Trembling, Kallan fumbled over the flap of her pouch, her eyes frozen on the boy.
Too long, Kallan searched among the pouch’s contents. It was with a deathly grip that she withdrew the luscious treasure.
Dropping alongside Halda, Kallan unsheathed her dagger. The boy was breathing, but barely. With quaking hands, Kallan withdrew Idunn’s apple.
Kallan sat unmoving, as she clutched the apple, barely hearing Rune’s step behind her.
She could save him. With one drop, the boy would never again know pain, never again suffer, he would never die, with just one drop.
The lad was slipping. She had to do something.
Still holding the apple, Kallan grasped the boy and administered her Seidr, threading the golden strands through him. The Seidr flowed into the boy’s mouth and down the side of his face. With shaking hands, Kallan pulled at his shirt and the pool of black that had fused to the cloth. There, the stench of decay was the strongest. The wound was old, and more than blood seeped from his gut.
Blood coated her hands, smearing the perfect gold of the apple with vivid streaks. Tremors jolted her fingers as she shuddered uncontrollably. She had no choice. The boy would die.
Unable to hold her hands steady, Kallan moved to cut a slice from the apple and nicked her thumb instead. Rune took a step, and held himself back just as Kallan abandoned the apple and placed her hand onto his wound where she poured her golden Seidr threads.
“Please,” Kallan breathed then muttered the incantation below her breath.
Her body shook as she drained her Seidr, pouring everything she had into the boy. The red of her blood mingled with the gold of her Seidr and the black of his blood and waste. The bleeding slowed, but his staggered breath punched the air. Once. Twice. Then never again.
Still glazed, the boy’s eyes stared at the invisible point above his bed.
Torrid cries filled the house, but Kallan heard nothing. With the last of her strength, she rose to her feet, deadened to the weight of her arms. White fingers caked in putrid gore relinquished the apple. With a thud, it struck the floor and rolled, stopping in a pool of dried blood at Rune’s feet.
Consumed by the grief she could no longer fight, her feet carried her past Rune. Silently, he watched from the shadows and, knowing the look in her eye, he followed her out the door.
The night’s darkness enveloped Kallan, suffocating her in the abyss. Stumbling in a vacant stupor, she dragged her feet into a barren clearing beneath the moon. There, she dropped to her knees.
The night’s cold air invaded her lungs. Tightening her grip on the dagger, Kallan plunged the dagger into the earth, pulled the blade through, and counted.
One for Father.
Withdrawing the dagger from the soil, Kallan lunged and remembered the boy.
Two.
This time, her sorrow dug deeper as she stabbed the earth, rending the walls of her anguish.
“Three,” she murmured, remembering Olga’s son and Dofrar.
Four where Mother lay dead. How many more?
Kallan counted and stabbed again. Maybe if she dug deep enough, the boy would heal.
Kallan gouged the earth. Something in the soil could heal them. It had to. Memories of her father flowed from behind her wall. Tears mingled with the dirt and fell on her hands.
Three hundred for the lives of Austramonath.
Desperate to ease the pain, Kallan tilled the earth with every stab of her blade, convinced the next one would be enough, but each cut, each thrust could not fill the insatiable ache, and she dug deeper.
Tossing the blade aside, Kallan dove, burrowing her hands into the earth. With the tips of her fingers, she clawed, tearing at the ground as if looking for relief.
“Kallan.”
Deeper. Almost there.
“Kallan.”
Blood and earth covered her hands.
“There are no ships,” she whispered. Tears blinded her.
“Kallan.”
“It’s just there,” she said. “I can almost see it.” Down to her knuckles, Kallan burrowed, desperate to find the end. “The boy must be burned. Father must be burned.”
“Princess.” Rune took her by the shoulders.
“Or the ravens will eat them…the ravens will eat them…and Odinn won’t find them. Odinn won’t—”
Kallan lunged again. A rock sliced open her finger and Rune pulled her into him.
“Please,” she gasped, falling, and Rune caught her.
Sobbing, Kallan shook, digging her nails into Rune’s arms.
“I want my father back. Please give him back. I’ll let you go…I’ll let you live…”
The crescent moon lit her eyes wide with tears as Rune cupped her face. His thumb brushed a tear and more flowed in its place.
“I can’t,” he said.
“Please,” she begged, brimming with despair, certain he could fix this, certain he could mend it. “I have silver…please…I’ll pay…give him back.”
“Kallan—”
“I’ll do anything. Anything. I want my father back.”
And Kallan fell.
Giving her refuge where there was none, Rune rocked as Kallan cried until the latest hour, when the shadow ebbed and took with it the last of her wall. There, free of the anguish that bound her, Kallan slept.
CHAPTER 55
Kallan woke to the pop and crackle of a fire. With a deep sigh, she pulled in the warm scent of roasted venison. Walls of tanned hide formed a domed room where no fewer than sixteen poles were propped through a singular smoke hole blackened with soot. From the light that seeped through the opening, she assessed it was not yet midday.
Dolor and Shadow Page 42
