Dolor and Shadow

by Angela Chrysler

  Behind a wagon filled with barrels, Rune stopped and assessed his next move. A flash of silver half-buried beneath the body of a slain soldier caught his attention. Rune glanced about to confirm there was no immediate threat and emerged from behind the wagon. With a grunt, he pushed the corpse off the blade and took up the dulled iron sword.

  “Kallan!” he called with a flood of panic on the rise.

  His desperation caught the attention of a Dvergr, who charged at him, his axe raised at the ready. With a pivot, Rune dodged the blow and countered with a thrust through the heart. With a kick, Rune shoved the body off his blade and peered through the smoke and the dying strewn about on the ground.

  “Kallan!” he cried, not bothering to wipe the blood from his blade.

  Something grabbed his ankles and pulled him down, slamming his shoulder into the ground. Before he could find his bearings, the something dragged him into the forest behind him.

  With a wide swing of his blade, Rune rolled onto his back, freeing his ankles. The wild, black mane and flash of clear ebony was enough to mandate a second swing of his sword.

  “Be silent,” the Dvergr said. “She doesn’t have much time.”

  The familiar voice forced Rune still and, all at once, he recognized the wide, black eyes of Ori.

  * * *

  The cold water engulfed Kallan’s body, stabbing at her like a thousand knives. Gagged by the rags Olaf’s men had stuffed into her mouth, she failed to gasp against the cold of the lake. The weighted shackles cut into her wrists as she wriggled and fought to break her bonds. Kallan’s consciousness waned the deeper she sank to the lake’s bottom. She forced her eyes open despite the cold, and looked into the black nothing around her.

  Battling back the panic clouding her mind, Kallan gave a final jerk at her arms secured behind her back. Her body shuddered and the last of her breath left her to the black fathoms of Lake Mjerso.

  CHAPTER 64

  Golden light wafted beneath the waters in slender strips of ribbon. It twisted itself behind Kallan, encircling her with the glittering gold of soft light.

  She reached to touch it, but it bowed and arched away from her, teasing her, egging her to follow. The bands widened into tiny rivers that flowed in a steady stream down, deeper into the black chasms of nothingness. There, in the depths, nothing mattered. Nothing else existed there where the world she left behind ended, and this one began.

  Kallan pushed herself down, closer to the light and it mirrored her, pushing down deeper, twisting upon itself until it doubled back and wrapped itself behind her. She thought back to the Naejttie, Sarahkka, and Kallan wondered if this too was a Seidr-spring lost and forgotten beneath the lake.

  “Kallan.”

  She ignored her name, eager to pursue her curiosity, and gave a hard kick, propelling herself closer to the light. It had branched itself out into thousands of strands, whipping and flowing, bending and forming as it moved with the water.

  “Kallan!”

  She forced her mind clear and tried to move closer, but the rivers of light were flowing too fast. She struggled to keep up.

  “Kallan!”

  With a deep gasp, Kallan opened her eyes and stared into the black night speckled with starlight and the lights of the Great Hunt. The lake wind rushed over her soaked body and she shook against the sudden cold. Her breath punched the air in a series of gasps. Her body convulsed against the chill.

  “Stay with me!” Rune’s voice barely penetrated the thick wall of her consciousness. “Kallan?”

  She looked about, disoriented at first, until her eyes found Rune leaning over her. Droplets of water fell from his face and his black hair was matted to his neck and brow. A wide smile broke across his face as her breathing settled and confusion cleared.

  Throwing her arms around Rune’s neck, Kallan gasped with relief. Lake water glued her gown to her skin as each granule of sand beneath her dug into her legs. Ignoring the discomfort, she crushed Rune in a hug, taking solace in his warmth that permeated the chill and regulated her pulse.

  He was as drenched as she was, but Kallan tightened her grip and buried her face in his neck as she waited for the disorientation to pass. Astrid snorted and pawed the ground beside Freyja and Kallan peered over Rune’s shoulder. The lake stretched out like black glass, reflecting the blue and purple ribbons of the Valkyrjur’s Lights overhead. The forest resumed where the beach ended and pine trees clawed the sky. A pair of clear, black eyes, framed in the mass of black hair stood vigilant alongside Astrid with reins in hand.

  “Rune,” Kallan said, moving so as to not prematurely provoke the Dvergr. Flicking her wrist, Kallan poised her arm, and aimed as she moved to fire.

  “Kallan, wait.” Rune threw himself into her, slamming them into the ground as she unleashed a stream. With a thud, they hit the beach, knocking the air from Kallan as Ori ducked. The tree behind him sizzled and the fire died.

  “Get off,” she said as she opened her claws to Rune and he rolled with her.

  “Kallan, be still,” he said.

  “What are you doing? That’s a Dvergr!” Kallan pointed a finger at Ori. “He’s one of them!”

  “He helped me find you!” Rune said.

  “I know what he is,” Kallan said.

  “You’re alive because of him.”

  Kallan studied Rune’s face for lies.

  “He’s been following us since Jotunheim,” Rune said. “He saw where they took you and led me from Olaf’s camp. It’s because of him I was able swim out to you before you were even in the water.”

  “Rune, they’re coming,” Ori urged.

  “We don’t have the time,” Rune said. “The Dvergar are here.”

  “If they’re here, it’s because he has led them here,” Kallan said.

  “Listen! Foolish! Woman!” Rune punched each word with a tone that forced her to hold her tongue. “They are here because Motsognir brings his army. He has not stopped. He is here.”

  “Three thousand ride from Svartálfaheim,” Ori interjected, walking closer with Kallan’s dagger suspended from his hand. The color drained from Kallan’s face as she lay, not moving, waiting. “Rune, we have to go.”

  Rune shuffled to his feet and extended a hand to Kallan, who slapped it away then pushed herself from the ground. After brushing off the clumps of sand that had caked onto her clothes and hair, Kallan took up her skirts and wrung out the excess water.

  With a huff, Kallan released her gown and sneered at the Dvergr whose unreadable ebony eyes met hers. Without a word, Ori made his way back to the horses. With a blank look, Rune joined the Dvergr, leaving Kallan to bring up the rear with a huff.

  As Rune gathered Freyja’s reins, Gramm’s silver filigree hilt and red pommel caught Kallan’s eye. In an instant, she moved. Unsheathing the sword from Rune’s side, Kallan swept the blade toward Ori, stopping the tip at his throat.

  “Do not turn your back, Dvergr,” Kallan said, daring him to move. “The scars inflicted upon me are too bold a reminder of what your kinsmen did to me. Some wounds run too deep,” she warned.

  With a nod, Ori held her gaze. “I understand,” he replied.

  Slowly, Kallan lowered the blade, grimacing as she moved to take Astrid’s reins.

  “Hold it.”

  Kallan turned her attention to Rune, who snatched Kallan’s dagger from Ori. Without a word, he took two steps toward Kallan and yanked back his sword, sheathed Gramm, and handed Blod Tonn to the Dokkalfr. As Rune shuffled through the saddlebag, Kallan tightened her grip around the black hilt.

  Almost immediately, Rune withdrew Kallan’s pouch and handed it to her. As she busied herself with the strap, Rune pulled Ori’s black leather overcoat lined with rabbit fur from the saddle and dropped hard onto her shoulders.

  Kallan buckled beneath the weight. As he lifted himself into the saddle, Kallan tossed a final scowl at Ori, who seemed indifferent to her disapproval. After slipping her hand into Rune’s, he hoisted her up in front of him. Tak
ing up the reins, they started into a light canter that carried them along the lake’s shores with Ori and Freyja following right behind them.

  * * *

  With every softened footfall, Kallan frowned at the Dvergr walking alongside their mount, until the frequent shift of her eyes became one constant grimace permanently fixed over Rune’s arm.

  Ori ignored her venom and took care to avoid her eye. Indifference glazed his expression, angering her more. Despite Rune’s continuous efforts to block Ori from Kallan’s view, she made several adjustments in the saddle to regain a clear path in which to peer down from her seat upon Astrid.

  After an hour, Rune pulled back on the reins.

  “Ori,” Rune said, sliding from the saddle with a nod. Ori returned Rune’s nod and walked back down the path alongside the lake.

  Taking Kallan by the waist, Rune pulled Kallan to the ground, ensuring his grip stayed in place. Kallan shifted, but Rune’s hands tightened, adding a jerk that maintained her position. He waited, keeping her in place, until the last of Ori’s foot falls vanished.

  “What the Hel are you doing?” Rune asked as soon as they were alone.

  “What am I doing?” Kallan asked, attempting to shove his hands from her waist. They did not budge. “You’re the one picking up friends among enemies wherever you can find them. What’s wrong with you?”

  “We need him,” Rune said. A twinge of his regal demeanor burned in his eyes, and a flicker of respect pinched Kallan’s nerves.

  “There is nothing I will ever need from a Dvergr,” Kallan said, digging at his fingers holding her waist.

  “His king knows where we are,” he said. “They know we are heading to Alfheim. They know the path we take. It is not a question of if they find us. They will find us. They will catch up.”

  Kallan glanced at the lake, knowing he was right.

  “What then?” he asked when she didn’t answer. “What plan do you have to hold off a army of three thousand?”

  “Regardless of what I can do to evade them, travelling with one of them can be of no help,” Kallan said, looking back to Rune.

  Rune’s grip tightened on her waist.

  “He hopes to head off the scouts and redirect the troops. If he can convince them we took a different path, it may buy us the time we need to enter Alfheim.”

  “And why should they stop at Alfheim?” she asked.

  “Motsognir is convinced you have kin looking for you at the borders of Alfheim. If they see him, if they suspect your abduction was linked to the Dvergar, Motsognir fears the Dokkalfar will launch an army against Svartálfaheim.”

  With a creased brow and anger ebbed, Kallan studied Rune’s face. “Why would he think I have kin waiting at the border?”

  Ignoring her question, Rune continued.

  “I am certain, if we can get to the border before Motsognir catches up—”

  “We’ll be free of their huntsman,” Kallan finished for him, suddenly aware of how close he had pulled her in.

  “Yes,” he said, releasing his grip from her waist.

  Kallan stared out to the lake. Lost in the darkness and her thoughts, she rolled through her options. Her clothes were damp from the lake, leaving her chilled to the bone. With a shiver, she pulled Ori’s overcoat tighter around her shoulders.

  “Very well,” she said, “but I will not drop my guard. I will not sleep in the presence of that…that…” She pointed to the general direction taken by Ori. “That!”

  Kallan turned on her heel and marched back to Astrid, leaving Rune with his sighs of exasperation.

  CHAPTER 65

  Kallan lay awake, listening to the lake water lap the land as it flowed with the wind. Rune’s breath had already settled into the slow, steady rhythms of sleep. As Kallan flopped and shuffled into numerous positions to induce sleep, the scent of fish still clung to the air. She glanced to Rune across the fire. The Dvergr had not returned and she found herself wishing he would.

  From the shadows, she feared his betrayal and waited, prepared for the moment when he would suspect them asleep, but no attack came. Instead, Kallan watched and waited with guard raised as the night passed by.

  Wide-awake and irate, Kallan kicked off the hide and sprung to her feet. Creeping around the fire, she snatched up Gramm from Rune’s bags and fastened the sword to her waist. As she plodded off on the balls of her feet, running into the thick of the forest, she failed to see the slit of Rune’s eye watching from the fire’s side.

  * * *

  The black forest battled the Seidr light from Kallan’s hands. Repeatedly, Kallan directed the flow of her Seidr through the seed. Repeatedly, she tried once more.

  She had managed to tame the Seidr that naturally flowed through the earth beneath her feet and pulled from the waters as she came to streams and lakes, but the Seidr in the air, always there without structure or elements to direct its flow, was still too far from her reach.

  With another attempt, Kallan failed again and started over, pushing every bit of Seidr she could collect into the seedling in her hands. After several minutes, she opened her hands.

  “What are you doing?”

  Kallan jumped and dropped the seed to the forest floor. Flashing Ori a grimace, she gathered her skirts and kneeled, pulling apart each blade of grass and upturning each crumpled leaf in search of the apple’s seed.

  “What are you looking for?” Ori asked.

  Refusing to entertain his inquisition, Kallan shuffled through the mulch and grass. His armor rustled as he walked and dropped to his knees in front of her. After a moment, he was silent again and she risked a glance up from her work. Kneeling and hunched on the ground before her, Ori pushed his fingers through the pine needles, leaves, and earth as she separated the grasses.

  “What are we looking for?” he asked, searching the ground.

  “A seed,” she said, feeling the cold in her voice scrape her throat.

  Ori froze and set his impenetrable, cold stare on her. Pausing, Kallan glanced up. His eyes, cloaked with grief, forced a sudden wave of discomfort through her and she hated him more for it.

  “What were you doing out here so far from camp?” he asked after she resumed her search.

  She didn’t answer.

  Ori shook his head with an affectionate chuckle. “You still find every moment to run off alone, don’t you?”

  Kallan’s hands paused on the grass. “What do you know of me?” she said through the hate that dripped from her words.

  Sincere hurt shone from the black of Ori’s eyes. “You really don’t remember, do you?”

  Kallan’s cold eyes remained unaltered.

  “I thought that the drugs had suppressed your memory,” Ori said, “but you don’t remember.”

  Her palms tingled with the temptation to set him ablaze right there.

  “And what, Dvergr, am I supposed to remember?”

  “The halls of my father that flowed with rivers of silver, and opals so abundant they could be cut right out of the rock face. Veins of elding so hard, only our smiths could shape those ingots…” Solemnly, Ori seemed to search for the glimmer of someone he once knew within Kallan’s iced eyes. “And mines so deep, our labyrinths descended into the earth beyond the roots of Yggdrasil down to the gates of Helheim. Do you remember nothing?”

  Kallan hesitated, forcing a civil composure.

  “What I remember…are the cold weeks I spent bound by your elding chains that burrowed into my wrists. And that pungent tang that robbed me of my senses, my reason…my will to live as I dangled at the end of a leash! Days spent cowering in the shadows while I was forced to endure those insipid rhymes meant to torment me!”

  Kallan sat back on her heels, forgetting all thought of the seedling lost to the forest floor. “The boot of your comrade smashing my face, crushing my hand, and breaking my nose, and the constant stench of bat buried in the bowels of the caves where you kept me chained like a Slider rolling in its own filth! That,” she spat, “is what I remember.
”

  Ori’s face fell, weighed heavy with a loss Kallan dismissed without a care. It was with a disheartened voice that Ori spoke, each word carried by his hope.

  “We were lost in the mazes of Nidavellir’s mines, chased by the dragons we had found. Your father and mine had exhausted the realm’s army in search of us…and when they found us, you insisted the dragons were there.”

  With widened eyes, Kallan listened, enslaved by the sudden colors of forgotten memories that merged one into the next until the colors became unblemished images she could identify.

  “He scolded us…we argued and stood our ground.” Ori spoke with a stronger voice that commanded her audience. “We insisted the dragons were real.”

  The pictures were clearing and Kallan remembered her father standing before them, glaring as he so often did in those mines. She saw the browns and tans and blacks of the fur cloak he always wore and the leather of his boots, the silver sheen of the sword hilt at his side.

  “How…” she tried to ask, muddled with images that struggled to refine themselves.

  “Before the war,” he said.

  Kallan narrowed her eyes, staring beyond the Dvergr where the images formed as she forced the memory.

  “There was a prince,” she said, “and dragons, deep within the chasms of the Svartálfaheim mines…in Nidavellir.”

  Ori sat patiently while Kallan pushed through dozens of memories, countless memories that fought to surface. She could see the mines again, streaked with their rivers of silver. She could hear the echoes of her laugh resonate through the caves, and the warm, black eyes of a boy, with a pale face untouched by the warmth of the sun. The black of his hair gleamed in the torchlight. As they crawled through the labyrinths, he cried out from somewhere in her memory.