A Crown of Flames

by Pauline Creeden

  Egill had never talked to his own troops like this before.

  Even the flirtatious guard, who Dyrfinna knew was unflappable, had a hand over her mouth.

  The queen lifted one hand and all their shocked whispers fell silent. “I believe I’ve heard enough,” she said. “Guards. Impound the ships of our warriors at the harbor. They can gather their things from there tomorrow morning. There will be no mission. All of you will stay here in Skala and return to my army.”

  Dyrfinna felt as if the air had been knocked out of her lungs. No mission—no army. The queen had taken her army from her yet again—though this time, without realizing it.

  Ulf spoke up. “Your Majesty, the threat from Nauma is real. I implore you to let us, or even some of us, go on this mission. We must stop her before we all suffer for it.”

  The queen shook her head. “If Dyrfinna has flown away on her wild dragon—the same one that destroyed half the town, may I add—then let her handle the situation as she deserves: On her own.”

  Ulf said, “Your majesty. Please. If you don’t want to send us, send somebody else you think is worthy of this important mission.”

  “Nobody will go,” the queen said, and Egill nodded. “That is final. In the meantime, Skala needs you here, rebuilding her homes and fighting in her army. Not on some wild goose chase based on a lie.”

  Ulf’s face went white. “Your… your Majesty!”

  That was as good as calling Ulf a liar outright.

  Dyrfinna could not contain herself. “Ulf is a man of honor,” she thundered. “He would not lie to you.”

  “You are dismissed,” The queen fixed a steely-eyed glare at Dyrfinna.

  6

  Some Father and Daughter Time

  Stunned into silence, the small group was escorted from the queen’s presence and sent away. They ended up in the courtyard, where they stood dazed.

  Ulf looked as if he’d been hollowed out. Dyrfinna burned in anger for him. How dare the queen call him a liar, even in a sideways manner? How dare she?

  “So much for that,” said one of the crew.

  “What do we do now?” one of them asked Dyrfinna.

  She looked at Ulf, ignoring the question. Her own friends were going to blow her cover if they weren’t careful.

  “I don’t know,” Ulf said. “Displease a queen, or displease a goddess. But all of us know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the threat is real. Those of you who have family and friends here, go home to your people. Those of you who don’t, we’ll make other arrangements. We’ll meet at the docks tomorrow morning for further instructions and to gather our belongings from the ships.”

  Dyrfinna’s army scrabbled away, some of them looking back over their shoulders as if confused.

  Dyrfinna fidgeted, wanting to pace, not wanting to wait. Nauma was out there, the goddess Skuld had sent her, but now they had to cool their heels here because their ships had been confiscated by the queen.

  Dyrfinna couldn’t sleep even though she’d bought a pleasant little room at the inn by the wharf. The inn was packed due to all the Skalans, displaced by the great fire, who could afford to pay for long-term room and board as they waited for their new houses to be built.

  Sitting in the common room, eating her evening meal, it was difficult for Dyrfinna to see so many people she knew and not be able to talk to them. Even here—especially here—she had to constantly remind herself that she was wearing the face of a stranger, a young man named Gydi. She listened in on the gossip in the tavern, asking about the queen and Egill, but didn’t get much information that she didn’t already know.

  The next morning, she—that is, Gydi—returned to the docks with great bitterness. As Dyrfinna gazed upon the ships, her brain was already churning through ways in which she could get them back. It didn’t seem she could make any progress without her own father, and now the queen, blocking her at every turn. She was not going to allow it.

  “Good morning,” said a familiar voice. It sounded like Ulf.

  But when she turned to respond, she saw Egill walking slowly toward her across the boards.

  As soon as she saw Egill’s face, she grimaced. “I… thought you were Ulf,” she said.

  And here he was, strolling around all innocent. Right.

  “Well met… Gydi? Is that your name?” Egill said in a fake-wondering voice. “Isn’t that a fine ship?” he asked.

  She knew perfectly well that Egill recognized that ship. It was originally his mother’s ship. When the queen called for troops to fight King Varinn, an eternity ago, Dyrfinna’s grandmother gave it to Dyrfinna to sail with her blessing.

  “It is a fine ship,” Dyrfinna said anyway. “But I grieve that we are not going to be allowed to chase the necromancer.”

  “Necromancer, eh?” Egill said patronizingly. He put his hands behind his back, gazing at the ship.

  “It’s what they called Nauma at King Varinn’s court.” Dyrfinna’s voice softened. “For all Varinn’s faults, at least he let these brave sea-rovers go on this voyage. Nauma is a danger to your people as well as ours.”

  Egill was standing too close to Dyrfinna. “Who was going to lead your voyage?” he said.

  A trick question. Dyrfinna feigned surprise. “Why, Ulf was chosen to lead,” she said. “The ship was his. By rights he should lead.”

  Egill shook this head. “So why are you here?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What is your role in this voyage?”

  “I was going to be a navigator. I don’t know what’s to become of me now.”

  “If you like, you can join one of our other ships, and do your navigation work for the queen.”

  Dyrfinna became exasperated. “I have not sworn fealty to the queen. And that is not the work that the goddess Skuld bade us to do. She directed us to shoulder these burdens, and to pursue Nauma. We must not go against the will of the goddess.”

  Egill came sauntering up like he knew he had something on her. Look out, she thought.

  “So, you short-tempered man, how did you get to be a part of this mission?” Egill asked.

  Dyrfinna had been up for most of the night working on plausible stories for these kind of questions, but this time she didn’t even go there. “Was that your little girl on the ship?” she asked. “Aesa? The one Ragnarok took care of?”

  Egill softened. “Yes, how did you know?” he asked suspiciously.

  “I wasn’t sure if there was another Egill that lived in this town. The little girl puts me in mind of my wee babe.”

  “Um-hm,” Egill said, ignoring her statement. “I want to know something,” he said. “What was Dyrfinna doing at King Varinn’s castle? Had she gone over to his side?”

  Dyrfinna put on a confused face. “I haven’t the foggiest,” she said. “If I met her while I was there, I don’t know it.”

  “Here’s a different question. If Dyrfinna killed that dragon, as you said, then why wasn’t she put in charge of the mission?”

  “Skuld had a different task that she bade her do,” Dyrfinna said. “That much I do know of her. The girl was long gone on her orange dragon before we had time to load the ships.”

  “Is that so? Because that orange dragon came here and burned half the city.”

  Dyrfinna forced herself to swallow her exasperation. “Sir, I am merely a navigator. The words of the goddess are not given to me,” she said. “It’s not for me to speculate.”

  Egill didn’t even seem to notice. “If I may be blunt, there’s something odd about you, and I have my eye on you.”

  Dyrfinna said nothing, just began to walk to the ship, for the guards were showing up to let the passengers on to get their things. More people were coming to the wharf now, to help the former prisoners get their things before they returned to the queen’s city.

  “Don’t walk away from me,” Egill said.

  And then he sang a resonant note that vibrated in the street like a gong.

  No, Dyrfinna thought as she felt th
e note strike her … specifically, her face.

  A cry went up from around her, people turning and looking at her. Dyrfinna’s hands went to her face.

  The charm was gone. Egill’s note had dissolved the charm. Dyrfinna’s false face was gone like a wisp of fog before the wind.

  “It’s Dyrfinna!” somebody cried.

  And everybody spun to see.

  “Look what we have here,” Egill said, moving in at her. “Why, it’s Dyrfinna, my beautiful daughter. Now you’re going to die.”

  In an instant, Dyrfinna took two steps back and pulled her sword to stand with it in the guard position before her papa… before Egill.

  “That’s better,” she said. “I prefer to be honest and open, except when my life is in danger.”

  “You returned against the edict of exile,” Egill proclaimed for the whole crowd to hear. “Now you will lose your life.”

  “Nice to know that you’re taking such pleasure in condemning your daughter to death,” she said.

  “I take no pleasure in it,” he roared, and swung his sword at her.

  “I’ve long wondered why you hate me so,” Dyrfinna said as their swords clashed in battle. “Maybe a demon took over your soul, because I simply cannot think of any other explanation for you to hate me this much.”

  “Guards! Guards!” Egill shouted as he fought off Dyrfinna’s sword. “Stop this wretch!”

  “You can’t capture me yourself, can you? Then tell your guards to come and get me. I’ve beat them all in fair fights. I can do so again.”

  “Aw, blast,” one of the guards said as they came running.

  “Come on, then!” Dyrfinna cried, grinning. The first guard she knocked into the water. The second one she kicked into Egill’s arms. She fought the third guard while Egill and the second guard fought to get off the ground without accidentally stabbing each other.

  Dyrfinna leapt up on the side of a ship and fought everybody from its prow.

  Then Aesa came running in. “No! Don’t hurt Sissy!”

  “Somebody catch her!” Dyrfinna roared.

  Terror seized her that Aesa might run into the swords before she knew what was happening, because the little girl was going so fast.

  Dyrfinna leapt down with a shout. “Stop her before she gets killed!”

  Nobody seemed to notice the little girl running toward them.

  Dyrfinna swore. With a huge leap, she flung herself at the crowd of sword fighters at her feet, cutting through as many of them as she could with a savage cut of her sword and her dagger in her other hand, clearing the souls of all.

  She raced toward Aesa. “Get away!” she yelled, and turned and faced the oncoming attackers, cutting down as many as she could.

  That didn’t last long. Something slammed into the back of Dyrfinna’s head. Everything instantly went black.

  7

  The Black Cloth

  When her eyes fluttered open, she recognized the dark grey stone of the Queen’s castle with the swirls of lighter grey through the stones. But she’d never seen this room before.

  She opened her eyes a little more against the pain, and now she saw the bars on the window.

  “Good job, Finna,” she muttered.

  Her skull throbbed. She went to touch the back of her head and found her hands shackled together behind her. She was sitting up in a corner on the floor where somebody had dumped her like a bag of wheat.

  “Good morning, buttercup,” Egill said from his chair in the opposite corner, where he was busily carving a small dragon from a block of wood.

  Dyrfinna instantly bristled. He used to say this to her when she was a little girl in the morning. But her anger turned just as quickly to deep, painful grief.

  “I don’t understand you,” Dyrfinna said quietly. “Are you trying to be funny? Or are you trying to be hurtful?”

  Even when she knew he had no love for her, some part of her irrationally wished for his love – a father’s love, the way he had once cared for her, when she was a little girl.

  But when Dyrfinna accidentally killed her sister Leikny, that had all ended.

  Egill didn’t respond. He handled his knife deftly, small chips of wood falling onto his lap as he whittled scales into the dragon’s sides.

  “Where’s Aesa?” she asked, trying to push herself up.

  Egill shook his head. “She’s fine. Really, I’m surprised she’s survived this long in your presence.”

  That was like a punch to the chest. She breathed deeply. “I know. You’ve been gone from home so much that I’m surprised you remembered who she was.”

  Now he met her eyes, and fury glimmered in their depths. “A snake will shed her skin, but she’s always the same snake.”

  “Aphorisms, now? Can’t answer that, can you?”

  He said something she wasn’t going to repeat.

  Dyrfinna snorted. “When I was bringing her back home, she couldn’t wait to see Mama. She didn’t say anything about you.”

  “We need to get you out of the way before you cause any more trouble,” he said.

  “You want to stand against the goddess Skuld?” Dyrfinna asked.

  “No, I’m standing against you and all your lies.”

  This floored Dyrfinna, as she’d always valued honesty as much as possible. “I don’t understand.”

  “You’ve blocked a lot of things I’ve wanted,” he said.

  “Like what?” she cried.

  Egill just shook his head. “Leikny was foretold to do many great things,” he said. “You were foretold to kill me.”

  Dyrfinna felt as if she’d been plunged underwater. She couldn’t respond to that one.

  Then he grabbed her by the arm and hauled her to her feet. He reached into his pocket and pulled out what looked like a black handkerchief and jammed it over her head.

  It wasn’t a black handkerchief. It was a black hood, with no holes for the eyes or mouth. An executioner’s hood now covered her head.

  “So, we’re going to put a stop to that right now,” he said.

  8

  Utterly Dazed

  Dyrfinna fought but she couldn’t see through the hood over her head, and her hands were bound. Egill was dragging her out of the room. She dug in her heels, but he yanked her off her feet. She struggled as he dragged her down the hall.

  “I’m not really your father,” he said. “I’ve always considered you a changeling, left to baffle me and vex me. It made things so much easier for me that way.”

  Who was this man? Dyrfinna stopped fighting back. Everything that was happening… the words he was saying as he dragged her blithely to her doom was beyond anything she could fathom or right.

  “Call the executioner over,” Egill said.

  Horror swelled in Dyrfinna.

  Suddenly she was singing.

  And what came out of her mouth was an attack against dark forces, against imps and marauders and devils. And she sang a prayer to Frejya to help her, begging the goddess to give Dyrfinna the power to burst her bonds and escape.

  The music filled the room with physical force, and Dyrfinna felt as if the song were expanding and expanding like something alive. It pressed against her own body as if the very air were swelling. Other people in the room were trying to sing, trying to block her and stop her song, but her music compressed and flattened their songs. Egill was trying to cover her mouth with his hand, but Dyrfinna’s black hood kept him from succeeding.

  At her music’s command, the ropes holding her snapped , and they unwound around her arms. The hood she wore shredded itself, disintegrating into bits of cloth and thread that fell from her face. She shook her head to shake it out of her eyes and mouth. She sang louder as Egill grabbed her and tried to force his hand over her nose and mouth. She sang strength into her arms, and shoved him so he sprawled against the wall.

  And then, head down, hands open, she sang more powerfully against him about breaking free. She couldn’t stop.

  “Get back, get out!” Egill shou
ted. He threw a hand up to block her and tried to sing a shield against her.

  Dyrfinna felt her song sliding out of control, felt its power cranking up to an almost unbearable degree, but she couldn’t stop singing, even as people struggled to walk, even crawl, out of the room to safety, as the music cramped the air and made it nearly impossible to move…

  Lightning.

  An explosion.

  Everything went black.

  Then Dyrfinna realized she was still standing. A white haze filled her vision. Silence rang in her ears. The air was thick with dust that tasted like rocks.

  There was movement through the haze. Sunlight came in on the right, though there’d been no door or window there before. A pile of rubble lay there, she suddenly realized. Her mind was moving very slowly.

  An arm was sticking out of the rubble.

  She gazed at it, not comprehending.

  She needed to move, but her body didn’t move. Her brain had stopped working, as if stunned.

  People ran around with their mouths opening wide as if they were yelling, but with no sound. People began throwing stones aside from next to the arm. A tiny faraway “tink” when a rock they flung aside landed. People had their mouths open in shouts. Somebody planted themselves in front of her and yelled, placing a hand on her arm. She stared at him blankly as if he were addressing the wrong person. Then she walked around him and out into the sunlight, stumbling over rocks.

  A strange, sudden hot wind sprang up from in front of her, from nowhere, and blew her hair back for a moment. Then it died down into stillness.

  There was a strange distortion in the air ahead of her.

  She stopped, peering at it.

  And suddenly, something changed. An odd sensation came over her, like a cool sheet falling over her.

  Then a slight breeze from in front of her. Somebody grabbed her arms.

  Or at least that was the sensation she felt. But the air in front of her was empty. Nobody was there.