Daughters Of The Storm

by Kim Wilkins

  ‘One part of my mind was devoted to holding it in place,’ the old woman explained, ‘but it was growing weak. It could keep a few people in, like yourselves. But it never would have kept an army out.’

  ‘I knew it,’ Bluebell said, patting the grip of her sword. ‘Come on, sisters. To the road. Old woman, do you know of an under-magician named Yldra?’

  ‘I have heard of her. She lives much further north. They say she was once a queen.’

  Bluebell frowned. ‘Perhaps a king’s sister. Never a queen.’

  Rose climbed to her feet and helped the old woman to hers.

  ‘I want to give you something,’ the old woman said, grasping Rose’s soft white hands in her calloused fingers. She looked fixedly into Rose’s eyes, as though trying to see inside her skull.

  Rose had the distinct impression of something stirring in her mind, almost as though the old woman were actually poking around gently.

  ‘Come on, Rose,’ Bluebell said, already a hundred feet away with Ash following her.

  Rose glanced at Bluebell, then back to the old woman.

  ‘You love,’ the old woman said.

  ‘I do.’ Her heart squeezed tight.

  ‘It’s how you knew.’ The old woman smiled. Her worn teeth were grey with age. ‘You are apart from the one you love.’

  Rose thought about Heath and her heart felt heavy.

  The old woman withdrew her hands and reached for her belt. It jangled as she felt along it, her fingers finally coming to rest on what she sought. She detached it from her belt and held it out to Rose.

  It was a loop of bronze, with a piece of ice trapped in it. Rose touched the ice. The cold made her shiver. ‘What is it?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s a seeing-circle. Every morning, from the moment when the first curve of the sun appears, to when it has risen fully, the ice will become water, suspended in the seeing-circle. You will be able to see your loved one even if you are parted.’

  Rose’s heart lifted in her chest. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. But first, you must name the one you love the most in the world. So I can enchant it properly.’

  Rose opened her mouth to say Heath, then remembered her daughter and cursed herself. All things being well, Rowan would be at Folcenham by now, safe in Wengest’s arms, playing with Nurse and eating like a pig. Within weeks, Rose would be with her again, able to see with her own eyes every morning if she was well and happy. She remembered Heath telling her about going into battle. In a two-minute skirmish, all can be lost. Surely it wouldn’t have been wrong to ask for assurance of his safety when they were destined to be apart?

  But Rowan was her child. And she didn’t know if everything was fine: if Ivy and Sighere had made her feel safe, if Wengest made her feel loved, and if she was crying on waking every morning because Rose was not there.

  ‘Rowan,’ she said. ‘My daughter.’ She fought selfish disappointment.

  ‘You have to choose a place to see her.’

  ‘If I can only see her at dawn, then it must be her bed back in Folcenham.’

  The old woman lifted the loop to Rose’s lips and said, ‘Go on, whisper her name.’

  Rose did as she was asked. A wisp of steam rose from the ice. She handed it to Rose.

  Rose pinned the bronze object to her own belt. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t ever change what the seeing-circle shows you, but you can pass it to another, if you desire.’ The old woman raised her arm. The owl flew to her with a clatter of its giant wings. Rose stepped back, alarmed, but then the owl was still.

  ‘Good luck on your journey,’ the old woman said.

  ‘Good luck with ...’ Rose trailed off. ‘Good luck.’

  The old woman nodded, her mouth trembling. ‘Bless you.’

  ‘Are you coming, Rose?’ Bluebell called.

  Rose looked up. Bluebell and Ash were waiting. Bluebell’s lips were set hard with impatience.

  Rose thoughtfully fingered the seeing-circle on her belt. ‘Yes, coming,’ she called, hurrying off towards her sisters.

  The dogs and horses had not strayed far from where they had been left, and were fresh and energetic where the sisters were not. Bluebell wanted them out of the deep wooded path before they rested and that meant a half day’s travel. Ash’s anxiety grew as the day woke up. Her belly felt loose, her scalp prickled. She thought, at first, it was a result of not having slept the night before, but as they wound their way out of the woods, she knew it was something else. Whoever was following them had waited for them and was now shadowing them again.

  There was nothing else to do but go forwards, so Ash kept her gaze in front of her and kept going. The road grew shallow, and light ahead told her the wood was thinning. The grim yews gave way to young elms, strong saplings stretching up for sunshine. Bluebell increased the pace, despite Rose’s protests.

  ‘The sooner we’re there, the sooner we can rest,’ Bluebell told her.

  ‘Where’s “there”?’ Rose asked But Bluebell didn’t answer. They were hoping for a village, for an inn, for a bed. Especially as the earthy smell of rain behind them intensified.

  Finally, finally, the road widened and they left the woods behind. Stretching off on either side was overgrown farmland. Meadow grass and wildflowers growing unchecked. Ambitious hedgerows that marked off fields that were too rocky ever to grow much. And, in the distance, the dark shapes of buildings.

  ‘A village,’ Rose breathed.

  ‘A bed,’ Ash said, glancing at the sky. Dark grey clouds were moving in. ‘Bluebell?’

  ‘Yes, we’ll stop. We’ll rest this afternoon and have a good night’s sleep. We are only a few days from Yldra now.’

  This time, they were careful. Ash, in her counsellor’s clothes, found them a room and Bluebell was kept well hidden when Rose went to the inn for meals. They ate in their room — a dim space lit by one narrow shuttered window and smelling of mouldy rushes — then eased their weary bodies into soft beds. Bluebell said they should only sleep an hour so they could sleep properly that night, but even she didn’t sound convinced by her logic. Ash suspected they would all wake in the middle of the night when it was too dark to travel, but couldn’t fight the tide of tiredness. Sleep. Now. She fell into a deep, dreamless slumber.

  When she woke later, she was confused. It was daylight, but not morning. Dusk. It took her a moment to remember where she was and why she was sleeping in the day. Then the sound that had woken her repeated itself.

  Somebody was trying the door.

  ‘Bluebell!’ she whispered harshly, sitting up and shaking her sister, who was asleep next to her.

  Bluebell was awake and on her feet in half a moment. Rose sat up, bleary. ‘What’s going on?’

  Bluebell held her finger to her lips and approached the door silently. She reached for the latch.

  Ash’s heart stuttered. Something was about to happen ...

  She formed Bluebell’s name with her lips, to tell her to stop, not let the future in.

  Then the door was open and Bluebell was hauling in a small, thin man with one sharp brown eye and one useless one. Her hand went to her sword. ‘You’ve been following us,’ she spat.

  ‘Stop!’ Ash cried. ‘Don’t hurt him!’

  Bluebell’s head snapped up. ‘You know him?’

  The man looked at Ash. A thrill of light and heat passed through her and, impossibly, his name formed in her head: Unweder. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’ve never seen him before.’ But she was absolutely certain she had been waiting for him her whole life.

  Twenty

  Wylm wore the contents of Eni’s stomach more than once on the crossing from Thyrsland to Hrafnsey. The four-day journey was plagued by ill tides and rain, so that the boy had no hope of keeping any food down. He sat miserable, damp-chinned, pressed against Wylm for most of the journey. Wylm’s exhaustion started in his marrow, and extended out to his toes and fingertips. He needed a hot bath, a sleep in a comfortable bed, some space from the child.
What he faced, though, on arrival at Hrafnsey, was nothing so certain or comfortable.

  They sighted land in the early morning as Wylm was rousing from a sitting doze. The sky was a blue-pink flush, diligent stars still twinkling dimly between clouds. Figures moved about in the grainy light, dropping the sails, taking up the oars. Cold shivered across his chest and he pulled the rough blanket up higher. The fresh smell of morning was spoiled by the sour smell of stale vomit. The water slapped against the side of the boat rhythmically, as he tried to recapture sleep ahead of their landing.

  Eni woke as the flat hull skidded over gravel and came to rest. His fingers were hard on Wylm’s upper arm and Wylm opened his eyes. The sun was low, but shining warm. Seabirds cried as they skated overhead. Wylm gently put Eni’s hand aside and crawled from under the storage area to look around.

  The island was covered in birdshit; gulls and gannets had nested in the jutting outcrops that flanked the gravel beach and the dark grey rock was white with it. A pervasive smell of seaweed and rain trapped in rocks greeted him as he stole a glance up the beach and across the long waving grass. He could make out the gable finishings of a wooden hall, carved as the wings of a bird: Hakon’s hall. The rhythm of his heart picked up. He stood, and reached down for Eni’s limp hand.

  One of the raiders ran ahead, no doubt to prepare Hakon for their arrival. The others, who had barely spoken a dozen words directly to him the whole journey, were now full of orders and warnings. They both had to have their hands tied — Eni resisted this violently, but unsuccessfully — they had to walk close, they had to keep their eyes down. Wylm watched his own feet crunch over gravel and mud and feathers, listening to the soft mumbling whine Eni made when he was anxious.

  ‘Hush, boy,’ Wylm said, with a stolen sideways glance. ‘You’ll be fine.’

  Eni wouldn’t quieten though, and Ragnar shouted at Wylm to be quiet and keep his head down.

  They trudged up a hill and onto rolling grass. No shadows of trees or rocks. The bitter ocean wind from the north surged freely over the land. The hall sat in a natural hollow, scarcely protected from the wind, and surrounded by rock huts with turf roofs. Wylm felt a hard hand on the back of his neck pushing his head down again; he fixed his eyes on the birdshit-speckled rocks and rotten boardwalk that his own feet trod up to the Crow King’s hall.

  The heavy doors slammed shut behind them, closing out the bracing sea air and forcing his lungs to fill with smoke from a low-burning hearthpit.

  ‘Sit here,’ one of the raiders ordered, shoving him to the ground. He dropped his head and closed his eyes a moment, catching his breath. The remembered waves still swelled and ebbed beneath him.

  The raiders were more gentle with Eni, whom they helped to sit on the rough wooden floorboards. Eni immediately wriggled very close to Wylm. The smell of ale-soaked wood and peat smoke enveloped them. Wylm heard the departing footsteps of his captors, the thudding of the door again. Then nothing.

  Slowly, Wylm opened his eyes and raised his head.

  A man sat on a wooden riser in a deep, carved wooden chair with high arms, looking at him. ‘Yes,’ Hakon said. ‘Here I am.’

  Wylm had expected a much older man, but Hakon was probably not yet forty. His hair was white-blond, his beard in two neat plaits. But his face was something from a nightmare. A ragged hole in his cheek, the edges little more than scarred flaps, allowed a glimpse through to his teeth and cheekbone. One of his eyes was missing, leaving a sunken sallow pit.

  ‘They say you can speak our tongue,’ Hakon said, having distinct difficulties with some of his consonants because of the strange, constrained movements of his mouth and jaw.

  ‘I can,’ Wylm said.

  ‘They say you sought me out, deliberately.’ Hakon gave a grin, which arrived on his deformed face as a nightmarish expression.

  ‘I did.’

  Hakon stood. He was impossibly tall, perhaps six and a half feet, with a lithe, muscular body and gigantic feet in stained leather shoes. As much as his face was ruined by battle, his body was clearly strong and fit. He circled them once, then stopped and crouched down in front of Eni. ‘Tell me about the blind boy,’ he said.

  ‘Show him your ring, Eni,’ Wylm said.

  At mention of the ring, Eni tucked his hands under his armpits. Hakon gently but relentlessly withdrew them with his own long, large hands and held the ring finger close to his face to inspect it.

  ‘Bluebell,’ Eni said, his voice little more than an anxious whisper.

  Hakon dropped Eni’s hand and turned to Wylm. ‘Bluebell.’

  ‘I found the child on her lover’s farm,’ Wylm said. ‘The ring proves beyond doubt that the child is hers.’

  Hakon stood and stared down at Wylm with cold, pale eyes. ‘You see a death’s head before you,’ he said, long fingers touching his own cheek. ‘Your sister is responsible for that.’

  ‘Stepsister,’ Wylm said quickly, concerned he was to be punished for Bluebell’s blows.

  The edge of a cruel smile. ‘I had your stepfather at the point of my blade. I was a half a breath away from spilling his blood. She saved him.’ Hakon spat the words. ‘She threw an axe from a mile’s distance. It found its mark in the side of my face.’

  Wylm didn’t show his scepticism.

  ‘She tried to deliver me to my brother’s hands, to face charges of murder and treason. They underestimated me, even your sister, even with all her strength and fury.’ He shook his head. ‘She has some dark, secret hands helping her, no doubt. It has long been said that she is unkillable. But lately, we on Hrafnsey have started to say something different.’

  The door opened slowly then, and Wylm turned his eyes to watch as a stooped old man with only fluff for hair entered the hall. His clothes were sewn over with long feathers, and a band around his head sprouted feathers at the back that hung down his shoulders and spine. As he walked towards them, Wylm caught a scent of sweet burning herbs and fish oil.

  ‘Ah, here is my something different now,’ Hakon said. ‘Welcome, old man.’

  The man’s eyes were pale grey, with pupils so small the irises were like mirrors. He made his way forwards by leaning on a rattling stick and came to a halt beside Wylm and Eni.

  ‘Look you,’ Hakon said to him. ‘Bluebell’s stepbrother.’

  ‘Stepbrother?’ the man said.

  ‘This is my randrman. His name is Eirik,’ Hakon said, as politely as he might if they were sitting down to break bread together. ‘Eirik, Wylm has brought us a boy he says is Bluebell’s son.’

  The randrman leaned hard on his stick, bending into a crouch behind Eni and taking a long sniff of his hair. ‘Kyndrepa,’ he said, in a cold, guttural voice. But Wylm did not understand the word.

  ‘Not unkillable,’ Hakon continued. ‘Bluebell can be killed only by her own kin. My randrman dreamed it, not twenty nights ago. And now ... here you are.’

  ‘The three-toed drake,’ Eirik said, bursting suddenly into life. ‘It clawed her to pieces. All that was left were crushed petals and blood.’ He extended his hand to indicate both Wylm and Eni. ‘But which of you will it be? The boy? Or the brother? Who will wield the trollblade? Who will cut open her breast with Griðbani?’

  Another untranslatable word. Wylm’s heartbeat flickered hotly in his throat. A sense of destiny was upon him, and it smelled like the strange burnt herbs that clung to the randrman.

  Hakon, however, didn’t feel the import of the moment. ‘It’s hardly going to be the blind child who kills his mother,’ he said with a snort. ‘Give the blade to the brother.’

  ‘Stepbrother,’ Wylm said again, softly, not sure why he was saying it.

  ‘You have travelled far,’ the randrman said to Wylm. ‘You must rest, for at week’s end, when the moon fills, we must spill your blood in the forge.’

  Wylm shuddered, but the randrman smiled and tapped him on the heart with a crooked finger.

  ‘You need no courage,’ the randrman said. ‘You need only Griðbani.’
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br />   Hakon, meanwhile, had drawn Eni close to him and knelt in front of him smoothing his hair. ‘Is it not a joke,’ he said, ‘that Bluebell’s son should be a dullard?’

  ‘A fit punishment,’ Wylm said. Then, hesitantly. ‘Will you hurt the boy?’

  ‘What do you think I should do?’ Hakon’s eyes were cold, fixed on Wylm’s face. Was the question a challenge?

  Wylm showed none of his fear. ‘I think he is of more value to us alive.’

  ‘If I sent him to her in pieces, would it not kill her with grief and wrath?’

  Wylm’s stomach clenched. He cursed himself for being weak, for having developed a protective sympathy for Eni. ‘This is Bluebell we speak of. The woman has no heart.’

  ‘Or at least no room to love anyone but her father,’ Hakon said, stroking his plaited beard thoughtfully. ‘Yes, more value in him being alive. Oh, ho. I have it!’ The nightmare grin split his face again. ‘I will take him to apprentice. I will raise him as my own. Now that will torture her.’ He leaned close to Eni, and his booming voice was remarkably warm. ‘You’re mine now, little boy.’

  Eni’s head moved from side to side. He didn’t seem anxious. Perhaps puzzled.

  ‘Leave him with me,’ Hakon said, standing and stretching at his full height. ‘Eirik will take you somewhere you can eat and wash.’

  ‘This way, kyndrepa,’ the randrman said, and Wylm climbed to his feet to follow him out into the thin morning sunshine.

  Eirik the randrman fed him and left him alone in one of the stone and earth huts. The wind howled over the turf roof, but the hut was warm and smoky from a low fire. Dark except for firelight. The walls were carved with rough, shallow shelves, and Wylm presumed from their contents that this must be the randrman’s own home. Shells and feathers and dried fish skeletons. Runic inscriptions peppered the walls, seemingly at random. The room had the same smell as the old magic-man himself: that acrid and sweet and slightly fishy aroma, as though he had spent many hours by the fire inhaling the smoke from the herbs that gave him visions. Wylm stripped to the waist, washed his face and upper body in a tub of cold, cloudy water, then sat on the bed. A poorly angled piece of straw pierced up through the blankets and poked his thigh. The water air-dried on his skin, coaxing goosebumps out of him. He crossed his forearms and rubbed his hands over his arms and shoulders to warm them, feeling his own lean musculature. As a child, he had been a skinny streak of pale flesh just like Eni. Wylm pulled on a clean tunic that Eirik had left out for him, which was too loose and gaped open at the front, revealing his hairless chest. He laced it as well as he could, pinned on a cloak and went to the door of the hut to let in the daylight.