by Robert Jones
"It's really there..." he said half stunned.
It was quiet and solemn, the air was crisp but she couldn't help but feel the presence of something unnatural.
"More blood," Erik said pointing up the hill that lay in front of them.
Thick dark blood had tainted the ice frosting of some of the grass. They climbed the small hill slowly and with care, keeping their eyes moving from shadow to shadow. It was night outside, but here in Mjolkum's dome, there was an eerie luminescence about, like the great wind barrier was emitting an ice-blue haze that helped them see.
Isolde could feel her heart thudding against her chest, this land made her anxious. She slid her hand down her side to find the comfort of her swords grip but her fingers flew back as she brushed the pommel.
"What's wrong?" Erik asked noticing her reaction.
"Feel it," she said gesturing to her sword, "it's searing hot."
Erik knelt down beside her and looked at the weapon curiously, reaching out and feeling the radiant heat emitted from the citrine crystal embedded in the pommel.
"What is it?" he asked having never noticed the jewel before.
Her mind flashed back to Skaldi's cabin and slowly she whispered his words aloud,
"Temper a lie with dragon's fire.
The blind will see with burning eye."
"What's that mean?" Erik asked startled by her trance.
She drew the sword from her side so the blade hung down and extended her arm out. Yellow light glowed out from the translucent swirls within the eye like a summer sunset. It drew her in. She peered through the smoky swirls that writhed within and the world came to her through a crisp honeyed filter.
Everything was as it were but it was if she could understand the truth of all things, as though she could see the unseen emotions. The trees shone brightly and the once hidden birds could be seen flittering between boughs and trunks like flaming arrows in flight. She gasped in amazement, the blood trail they had followed pulsated darkly, like the putrid trail that a snail leaves behind. Erik held an aura that throbbed darkly with bursts of white gold. But when she looked at the wall of wind she shrieked and dropped the sword.
"What do you see?" Erik asked in shock, but she was stunned, mouth gaping open and fell backwards into the grass.
"It's alive," she stuttered, "the wind is alive."
Erik picked up the sword and looked through the dragon's eye. His mouth swung open and Isolde knew what he saw. Through the eye, the wall of wind was filled with spirits. Thin beings of black light, slender and small with the wings of a dragonfly, flittering in all directions at whirling speeds. They crashed and cursed and kicked and bit in a frenzy of violence, clawing at the edge of the wall as if they burned in hell fire and wished nothing but escape.
A beast's bellow roared down from the hill behind them breaking their shock. Isolde spun up on her feet in an instant.
"Wulfric!" she cried out.
The huge man was above them like a lone tower of muscle and furs. He roared again baring rows of jagged teeth. She could see his eyes were wild, his face soaked with blood. His hands curled into fists of rage. A third bellow came crashing down the slope and the man came thundering with it.
"Run Isolde!" Erik called.
Her heart hammered in her chest and for a moment she was frozen. Erik rushed forward, her sword raised in his hand. She could see the oncoming collision, like two bucks charging with furious antlers. But before they met, her body came back and she ran.
CHAPTER XV
It was like a bad dream. She was light headed and the world strobed around her in flashes of horrific scenes. Her legs were racing up the hill. Wulfric's massive body hit Erik. He was on the ground. Her sword went flying. Her legs kept moving. Her heart pounded. She was over the hill, the world rushed back. The screams and grunts of Erik and Wulfric were terrible but they were behind her now. In front loomed the dark mountain, and the cave's entrance was plain to see. She sprinted with all her might, her lungs burning, begging for breath.
It was only a fissure in the black rock, snarled open like a dragon's jaws welcoming its prey. Isolde stopped in front of it. Her heart hammered. Snaking sigils and hard runes lined the dark dead rock. A warm wind sighed from the depths of the abyss within. Isolde clenched her jaw and darted into the hole. The air was warm, wet and still. The darkness consumed everything. She didn't hesitate but lurched forth down the chasm, holding her arms out so that her fingers ran along the slick wet walls of the passageway.
It was silent. Only her own sharp breaths and the soft crunching of her boots broke the still air. The light behind her faded away and disappeared entirely as the trail twisted and turned. Isolde kept moving, but now her steps were slowing. In the infinite darkness and silence, she had to pick her steps. She could feel the wet walls and her fingers traced blind engravings. She shuddered to think what they were. The passage went on and on and the walls fanned out so that she could no longer feel both at once. Each step was an eternity in time. She lost the walls completely. Now she was truly alone in the dark. There was no sound, there was no light, she felt as though she was floating alone in time and space.
Slowly she stopped in her tracks. There was nothing anywhere. She turned herself around, her eyes straining in the dark to see a glimmer of light anywhere. She was lost in the depths of the earth. Her heart began to pound. Her legs felt weak. Heeeeelppp... she screamed. But nothing replied, not even an echo. She screamed again and again until her voice went hoarse. Which way is back? She was panicking. Heeelllllpppp... was it a thought? Was she screaming? There was nothing in the darkness. Her knees crunched down. Did I fall? Isolde had no idea. She threw her arms around her. The ground. She had found the ground, she was on her knees. She swept her hands, sharp shards of rock were strewn around her. Rock? She thought... No, bone! her hands fumbled in the dark, she swore she could feel bones, the sharp shards of broken arms and jaws. Tears began to flow from her eyes.
She didn't know if she had slept, she didn't know when she stopped crying. Time was meaningless here. Her stomach rumbled, her body ached. She lifted herself up, trying her best to find her feet not knowing exactly where the ground was. She went on with no idea what direction she was facing. She could feel her neck twisting from side to side. Her eyes straining to see anything. Light... was it real? A warm glow far off could just be seen. Her heart leapt. It felt like a lifetime since she had seen anything. She moved slowly, her feet shuffling through the bones and dust below her. To her eyes, it looked as if the light was moving, as if it was coming to meet her. Was it a trick of her eye? She couldn't tell, but each step felt like leaps forward. the light grew and grew. It was overwhelming, all encompassing. It burned her eyes and just as it swallowed her whole she stepped through a low door onto dark oak floorboards that spread across a warm hall.
***
Isolde's mouth was aghast and her eyes stung as the light receded. She was in a hall with a long hearth running along the centre bearing a low fire smouldering away. Next to it stretched a table made of dark oak. It was old and worn but set for a feast. Isolde frowned at the scene, there was enough food here to feed her Jarl's hall. Stuffed chickens dressed with roasted vegetables, great cauldrons of steaming broth soup, a fat suckling pig, apple in mouth, mounted in the centre.
The feast sent a sweet odour into the air that left her mouth drooling. Isolde tore her eyes away from the food, her grumbling stomach reminding her of how long it was since she ate.
She wandered around the room, it was well lit and easy on the eyes. Everything was a wonder to her mind, it made her forget that she was deep in the bowels of the earth. The rock walls were hidden behind enormous tapestries. She looked around, they were everywhere, there must have been at least two-dozen. By the door, she had entered hung a beautiful image weaved flawlessly by a fine needle. It showed a blonde princess riding out from a castle with a guard of knights. Isolde moved around the walls, they seemed to tell a story. The princess and a handsome knight by a
stream. Another showed a marriage, but it was another man, not the knight. The first knight appeared again down the wall, he was fighting the man she married. The next showed the knight and the princess riding away. Isolde smiled. She skipped the next wall and turned to look behind the table of food. Isolde frowned. An old woman sobbed, was it the princess? Isolde's eyes flicked back to the wall she skipped, taking the art in all at once, the knight betrayed her, he married someone else. The princess was alone. Now she was old. Now she was tied to a stake burning in front of the castle walls. Isolde looked back at the first tapestry, it was the same castle.
"Isolde?" the soft voice of a woman made her heart jolt. Isolde snapped around to the one door leading into the room. A beautiful woman was standing by it. Her white dress swept the floor and flowed up to her waist where it came in tight before clinging to her body and wrapping itself around her shoulders. Her skin was white as snow, and silvery blonde hair cascaded down her back like a crystal waterfall. The woman smiled, and her cheeks lit up.
"Who are you?" snapped Isolde, reaching for her sword and realising she was unarmed.
"Don't you recognise your own mother?" the woman's voice was so soothing, like honey on a raw throat.
The woman came across the room. Her body seemed to float, she was so delicate, so perfect, so graceful.
"Isolde, my baby." She took Isolde in with open arms. Her body was cool to the touch.
Isolde had no words. Her mind was at once blank and full of thought. Her eyes began to flood and she hardened her jaw to suck them back in. She thrust her mother back at arm's length and looked her over.
"Who are you?" Isolde demanded.
"Your mother," the woman replied, "I have waited so many years to see you."
Isolde kept the woman away, "No," she cried, the words barely a sigh from her lips, "you cannot be..."
"I am." The woman's soft red lips spread into a smile and her deep sky-blue eyes melted as she took her Isolde into another loving embrace.
"My Isolde..." she said.
Her mother led her to the table, sitting Isolde's back to the warm fire and took a seat opposite her. She couldn't stop smiling, her face as perfect as a porcelain doll. Tears streamed down Isolde's face.
"Don't cry, Isolde," she said, "you must be so hungry, eat, please."
"How?" Isolde stammered, "how is this real?"
Her mother sighed, "It's a long story. I will tell you all, but let's eat for now."
Isolde wiped her tears away and smiled. She took a long carving knife and sliced the chicken open. Food had never tasted so good. The meat was steaming hot, the juices running down the fork as she skewered each mouthful. She ate hungrily, filling her face before realising her mother hadn't touched her meal at all but sat smiling as she watched Isolde from across the table.
"Aren't you hungry?" Isolde asked.
"No darling, you eat."
The fire flickered and cast shadows across the room. Her mother's face lit up in the light and for a moment the skin looked like wax.
"What's wrong?" her mother asked as Isolde blinked, trying to get a grip on reality.
Her mother again looked like the perfect porcelain doll that had entered the room. "Nothing," Isolde replied.
Isolde looked past her mother at the tapestry story she hadn't finished. After the woman was burned was a black canvas. The next a spinster in the dark.
"What are you looking at, Isolde?" her mother asked following her gaze.
The next image was the old spinster wreathed in flame again, but this time it was as if she was being purged in the underworld.
"I think it is a story," Isolde said following the images.
The old spinster disappeared after the flames, now there was a black devil, the world around him in flame, at his feet a tiny figure the size of an ant.
"It's a tragedy," her mother said.
Isolde's eyes looked at her mother's grim face before flicking past her at the large image behind. There was a foul beast, it was a human, Isolde knew, but the skin was withered and thin and sagged against the bone. Sinews of black hair hung low across a bald scalp full of tiny incisions. As Isolde's eyes took in the image, she realised the cuts were runes... sigils... hundreds of them, thousands, covering the cruel creature from head to toe. Isolde shuddered and looked back at her mother who was staring at her with the same smile she had worn since she entered.
"Do you know how it feels?" her mother asked, her smile fading, her eyes following Isolde's.
"How what feels?" Isolde asked.
Slam! Her mother's fist crashed against the table shuddering the wood and plates.
"How it feels to have your own daughter split you apart?" she shrieked, "to have your own daughter leave you bloody and broken for the hell hounds to drag you to eternal pain and misery?"
Isolde couldn't breathe. Her mother sat at the table looking as calm as anything, screaming profanities at her.
"To watch her grow up to be nothing? To be a failure!"
"Stop!" Isolde cried out, and her mother stopped. Mid-sentence, her mouth still half open, her eyes glazed over as they still bore down at Isolde with burning hate.
A hollow cackle creaked out from behind her mother's frozen body. Isolde's eyes danced up to the image of the tattooed hag. Its eyes came alive, its bony arms and legs began to move like the rusted wheels of some forgotten machine. Slowly at first, they creaked, the joints cracking, the loose skin wobbling. The image cackled again and crawled out from the painting so that it stood before Isolde, alive. The lifeless tattoos began to glow an ice-blue, foul hag's eyes did the same. She twisted her head up and cracked her neck, click... click... click... and reached out her gnarly arms to crack the elbows. She drew her arm up and placed her ancient hand on the head of Isolde's frozen mother. With a rasping voice like wind rushing through dried leaves, the hag spoke,
"You didn't like your mother?" she asked.
Isolde was horrified, stuck to her seat. She couldn't move her eyes from the foul fiend's head. Deep canyons of wrinkles cut into the skin, the folds curving and creasing the sigils and signs. Isolde's eyes darted down. Her hand was still on her fork, but the chicken was black and rotten, maggots wriggling from it. She shrieked in horror and shot off her chair. The entire table had decayed, the pig hollowed out from within, fat black flies crawling from its eyes and mouth. The soup was covered in mould and the vegetables rotted and brown. The smell was overbearing, as though death itself had swept across the room. Isolde nearly wretched.
The beast lurched herself up onto the table, kicking away the spoiled food as she fell back down inches from Isolde's face. Isolde backed away, her eyes wide, her breath shallow. Her heel caught the hearth behind her and the hag stepped forward. She raised her weathered hand and took Isolde's face in a bony grasp, squeezing her fat cheeks painfully.
"Your mother does say hello," she hissed, "do you want to see?"
Isolde shoved the creature back with all her might but her hands seemed to slide off the loose skin. She screamed as the bony hand squeezed her face tighter, driving her down onto her knees. Isolde howled in pain as the hag thrust her other hand into Isolde's chest. It felt as though a claw was ripping into her skin, long sharp fingers plunging deep into her flesh. Isolde choked. The claw was ice cold and she could feel the ice spreading through her chest. As though her veins were freezing over. Her head wheeled back and the world went dark as the creature cackled. She was falling, endlessly dropping in the abyss, alone.
***
The darkness gave way to brilliant white light. She was falling, wind screaming through her ears. Suddenly the white gave way to clear sky, the world spread out far below her. Mountains ran down the landscape like a great spine, a forest, a river, the wind whistling. A town, her town. Snap.
She was in a dark room. A woman screaming. The smell of blood was heavy in the air. Her mother. A bed. Blood. Blood everywhere. Screaming. Snap.
Her father howling tears. He looked so young. A baby in his arm
s. Snap.
A woman riding out from a castle, her smile beaming in the fair weather. She's riding over green meadows. Snap.
Darkness. Night time, a fire sparked up. Screaming. It was the same woman. Snap.
Isolde was falling into the abyss again. The ground opened up before her and the earth swallowed her whole, she fell until the dark fires of hell could be seen. Thick smoke rose up below, dark crimson rock glowing violently. Screams in the night, the cracking of whips and the cackle of sharp voices. Snap.
The charred remains of some poor human knelt before a winged beast. It was huge, its legs shaggy, its head horned. It lay a mammoth hand on the burnt flesh. Snap.
A woman cries out on a table of obsidian stone. The walls glow red. Was it a table or an altar? Faint markings throbbed in the jet black stone. Winged creatures tear away at the woman's blackened skin. Delicate knives slice into the flesh with astute attention to detail. Snap.
Isolde falls deeper into the earth, deeper and deeper. The wailing is horrendous, it fills the chasm thick with voices. One begins to stand out. A woman, shrieking for mercy. It is her mother. At the bottom of the pit. Bound in chains. Crying out as flames lick all around her. The ground smokes. Her feet are searing. The smell of burnt flesh fills the air. Her mother snaps her head up. Her eyes lock onto Isolde's. She twists her mouth into a cry that pierces Isolde's heart. Snap.
