The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2014 Edition

by Rich Horton

  Svart was a slave, but he was good with animals and knew ironsmithing. This made him valuable. He was left alone to do his work, which was caring for the farm’s horses. Kormak’s job was to help him and obey his commands. If he was slow, Svart hit him, either with his hand or a riding whip. Nonetheless, at day’s end they would rest together. Svart would talk about the family at Borg, as well as his travels with Thorstein to other farmsteads and to the great assembly, the Althing, at Thingvellir. The Marsh Men were a strong and respected family. When Thorstein traveled, he wore an embroidered shirt and a cloak fastened with a gold brooch. His horse was always handsome. Retainers traveled with him, and Svart came along to care for the animals.

  “Everything in his life is well regulated, except for his father,” Svart said.

  Kormak said nothing, but he thought that the old man could hardly cause much harm. Eighty years old and blind!

  He had no reason to visit the long hall, but he’d seen the members of the family at a distance. For the most part, they were handsome people who wore fine clothing even when they were home. The old man was unlike the rest: tall and gaunt and ugly, his head bald and his beard streaked white and gray. Thick eyebrows hid his sightless eyes. He felt his way around the farmstead with a staff or guided by one of his daughters.

  Svart went on talking. He had spent most of his life at Borg and remembered Egil’s father Skallagrim, another big, dark, ugly man with an uncertain temper. Strange as it appeared to Kormak, Svart was proud of the family and interested in what they did. The servants who worked in the long hall told him stories about Thorstein and the rest of the Marsh Men. He repeated these to Kormak.

  “Thorstein rarely crosses his father, but he did so recently. The old man has two chests of silver, which he got from the English king Athelstein. Athelstein gave him the silver as compensation for Egil’s brother, who died fighting for the king. The money should have gone to Skallagrim, who was still alive then. It was Skallagrim who’d lost a good son, who could have defended him from enemies and supported him in old age. ‘Bare is the back with no brother behind him,’ and even worse is a back unprotected by sons. But Egil kept the chests, because he is avaricious.

  “Now that he’s old and enjoys little, Egil decided to play a game with the silver. He planned to take it to the Althing, to the Law Rock, which is the most sacred place in Iceland. When he got there, he planned to open the chests and scatter the silver as widely as he could. Of course men would struggle to get it. Egil hoped they would draw weapons and break the Thing Peace; and he hoped that he would be able to hear them fight.

  “The old man has always settled problems through violence or magic. But Thorstein is a different person, and he said the old man couldn’t break the Thing Peace. ‘The land is built on law,’ as the saying goes. ‘Without law it becomes a wilderness.’ Thorstein would not let anyone in his household make a wilderness of Iceland. So now the old man is sulking, because he couldn’t do the harm he wanted to.”

  Let him sulk , thought Kormak. What kind of man would plan this kind of harm ? Though it was pleasant to think about the prosperous farmers of Iceland fighting over bits of silver.

  Svart told this story one day in summer, when the sun rarely left the sky. Then came fall, when the days shortened and the sheep were gathered in, then winter, dark and long. Kormak tended the horses in their barn. In all this time, nothing important happened, either good or bad, though he did become a better worker. He learned that he liked horses and the skills that Svart taught him. He even learned some smithing during the dark winter days.

  Spring came again. The sky filled with light, which spilled down over everything, and the wild birds returned to nest. Falcons stole the nestlings, swooping down from the brilliant sky. The farmworkers watched for eagles, which could take a lamb.

  One day Egil came to their building, feeling his way with his staff. Close up, he was uglier than at a distance. His nose was wide and flat; his eyes, barely visible under bristling eyebrows, were covered with gray film; his teeth were yellow and broken. A monster , Kormak thought.

  “Svart?” he called in a harsh voice. “Saddle three horses. I want to ride into the mountains with you and the Irish slave.”

  Svart looked surprised, then said, “Yes.”

  They had both been told to obey Egil’s commands, but Kormak felt uneasy. Thorstein was away visiting neighbors. They could not go to him. The people left on the farm would not oppose Egil.

  What could they do, except what they did?

  They saddled the horses with the old man standing near, leaning on his staff and listening. The one picked for Egil was an even-tempered gelding, entirely black except for his mane, which had red hairs mixed with the black. It reminded Kormak of rusty iron. Svart picked another gelding for himself, brown with a light mane and tail. Kormak got a mare that was spotted white and blue-gray. They were all good horses, but Egil’s was the best.

  When they were done, Svart helped the old man into the saddle, and the two of them mounted.

  “To the long hall first,” the old man said.

  They obeyed and stopped by a side wall. Two bags lay on the ground. “Get them,” Egil said.

  Kormak dismounted and put a hand on the first. It was so heavy he needed both hands to lift it. Inside the leather was something with edges, a box or chest.

  It might have been magic, or maybe the old man had some sight left. He appeared to know what Kormak was doing and said, “Give one bag to Svart and take the other yourself.”

  Kormak obeyed, heaving one bag up to Svart and then heaving the other onto his mare, which moved a little and nickered softly. He knew what she was saying. Don’t do this .

  What choice did he have? He mounted and settled the bag in front of him. Egil carried nothing except his long staff and the sword at his side.

  “Go up along the river,” the old man said.

  They rode, Svart first, leading Egil’s horse. Kormak came last. How had the old man been able to move the bags by himself? Had someone helped him, or was he that strong?

  A trail ran along the river. They followed it, going up over rising land. Around them the spring fields were full of sheep and lambs. Svart kept talking, telling Egil what they were passing. At last, the old man told them to turn off the trail. Their horses climbed over stones, among bushes and a few trees, small and bent by the wind. The land had been forested when the settlers came, or so Kormak had been told. But the trees had been cut for firewood, and sheep had eaten the saplings that tried to rise. Now the country was grass and bare rock and—in the mountains—snow and ice.

  They came finally to the edge of a narrow, deep ravine. A waterfall rushed down into it, and a stream tumbled along the bottom, foaming white in the shadow.

  “Dismount and help me to dismount,” Egil said, his harsh voice angry. This was a man who had needed little help in his life. He had served one king and quarreled with another, driving Eirik Bloodaxe out of Norway through magic. He’d fought berserkers and saved his own life by composing a praise poem for Eirik, when Norway’s former king held him captive in York. Now a slave had to give him assistance when he climbed down off a horse.

  Kormak knew all this from Svart. He dismounted, lifted the bag to the ground, and watched as Svart helped Egil down.

  “There are chests inside the bags,” Egil said. “Take them out and empty them into the waterfall.”

  Svart moved first, pulling a chest from his bag and opening it. “It’s full of silver,” he said to Egil.

  “I know that, fool!” Egil said. “This is the money Thorstein would not let me spend at the Althing. He’s not going to inherit it when I die. Toss it into the ravine!”

  Svart took the chest to the ravine’s edge and turned it over. Bright silver spilled out, shining briefly in the sunlight before it fell into the ravine’s shadow.

  “Now you,” Egil said and turned his head toward Kormak. The eyes under his heavy brows were as white as two moons.

  Korma
k pulled the chest from his bag and carried it to the ravine’s edge. Pulling the top up, he spilled the silver—coins and bracelets and broken pieces—into the river below him. As he did so, he heard a cry and glanced around. Svart was down. Egil stood above him with a sword. Blood dripped from the blade. Kormak tossed his chest into the river and turned to face the old man, who came at him, swinging his bloody sword. How could he see?

  The blade, swinging wildly from side to side, almost touched Kormak. He twisted away, losing his balance, and fell into the ravine, shouting with surprise.

  He fell a short distance only, landing on a narrow ledge and scrambling onto his knees. His back hurt, as well as a shoulder and an elbow. But he didn’t pay attention to the pain. Instead he looked up. The old man was directly above him, looking down with his blind eyes. “I heard you cry out, Kormak. Did you fall in the river? Or are you hiding? If so, I will find you, either with my staff or magic. I want no one to tell Thorstein what I did with the silver.”

  Kormak said nothing. After a moment, the old man vanished. Shortly after, Svart’s body tumbled off the ravine edge, falling past Kormak. An outflung hand hit Kormak as the body passed. He almost cried out a second time, but did not. Instead, he crouched against the cliff wall, pressing his lips together. Below him, Svart vanished into the river’s foam. Cold spray from the waterfall came down on Kormak like fine rain, making the ledge slippery.

  The old man reappeared at the ravine’s edge. “I can bring stones and roll them down on you. If you haven’t joined Svart in the river, you will then.”

  The old man was trying to trick him into making a noise. Kormak kept his lips pressed together.

  Egil knelt clumsily at the cliff rim and pushed his staff down along the stone wall, swinging it from side to side. Kormak lay on his back, making himself as flat as possible. The staff’s tip swung above him, almost touching. Kormak sucked his belly in and tried not to breathe.

  “Well, then,” the old man said finally. “It will have to be stones. I wish you had been more cooperative. Look at Svart. He gave me no trouble at all.”

  The old man stood stiffly. Once again he vanished. Kormak sat up and looked around for an escape. But the cliff wall was sheer. He could see only one way off the ledge: jumping into the turbulent, dangerous river below him. He stood, thinking he would have to risk this.

  As he stood, a door opened in the cliff wall a short distance from him, at one end of the ledge. A man looked out. He was tall and even handsomer than Thorstein Egilsson, with long, silver-blond hair that flowed over his shoulders and a neatly trimmed silver-blond mustache. His shirt was bright red; his pants were dark green; and his belt had a gold buckle. The man smiled and beckoned.

  This seemed a better choice than the river. Kormak walked to the door. The man beckoned a second time. Kormak stepped inside, and the man closed the door. They were in a corridor made of stone and lit by lanterns. It extended into the distance, empty except for the two of them.

  “Welcome to the land of the elves,” the man said. “I am Alfhjalm, a retainer of the local lord.”

  Kormak gave his name and thanked the elf for saving him from Egil.

  “We keep track of the Marsh Men, because they have always been troublesome neighbors,” Alfhjalm said. “As a rule, we don’t cross them, since we don’t want to attract attention. But we have a grudge against Egil, and now that he is old and weak, we are willing to disrupt his plans.”

  “Will he die out there?” Kormak asked, hoping that Egil would. The old man had killed Svart, who trusted him.

  “We don’t want Thorstein coming here to bother us, as he certainly will if he can’t find his father. He has no magic powers, but he is a persistent man. Some of my companions have gone to lead the horses away, making enough noise that Egil will be able to follow. In this way, they will lure him out of the mountains and close to home. Then they’ll help him catch the horses, so he can ride home with dignity. If they do their job well, he will never know that elves were involved. We like to remain hidden and unknown. As for you—come with me.”

  They walked along the corridor, which went on and on. After a while, Kormak noticed that the lamps cast a strange light, pale and steady, not at all like the light of burning wood or oil. He stopped and looked into a lamp. Inside was a pile of clear stones with sharp edges. The light came from them.

  “They are sun stones,” the elf said. “If we set them in sunlight, they take the sunlight in and then pour it out like water from a jug, until they are empty and go dark. Then our slaves replace the stones with fresh ones, full of light.”

  “You have slaves?” Kormak asked.

  “We are like Icelanders, except more clever, fortunate, healthy, and prosperous. The Icelanders have slaves, and so do we.”

  This made Kormak uneasy. But he kept walking beside the elf, who was taller than he was and had a sword at his side.

  At last they came to an open space. Light shone from above, though it was dimmer than the spring light in Borgarfjord. Looking up, Kormak saw a dark roof, dotted with many brilliant points of light.

  “Are those stars?” he asked.

  “No,” said the elf. “They are sun stones, like the ones in our lamps. If the stones are solitary, they gradually fade. But we can connect them, laying them one after another through channels in the rock. Then each pours light on the next and renews it. In this way they bring sunlight from the high mountains into our home. They never dim in the summer, but in winter it can be dark here.”

  Below the roof were high, black cliffs ringing a flat valley dotted with groves of trees. Animals grazed in green fields. In the middle of all this was a long hall, larger than the one at Borg. The roof shone as if covered with gold.

  “That is my lord’s hall,” Alfhjalm said. “Come and meet him.”

  They walked down a slope into the valley. The fields around them were full of thick, lush grass. The animals grazing—sheep and cattle and horses—all looked healthy and well fed. Many had young, which meant it was spring in Elfland as well as in Iceland.

  He had never seen handsomer horses. They were larger than Icelandic horses and every color: tan, red-brown, dark-brown, black, blue-gray, and white, with black or blond manes. As he and the elf walked past, the horses lifted their heads, regarding them with calm, curious, dark eyes.

  At last they came to a road paved with pieces of stone. “Our kin in the south learned how to do this from the Romans,” Alfhjalm told him. “You can say what you want about the Romans—they know how to build roads.”

  Kormak barely knew who the Romans were. But he was glad to be walking on a smooth pavement rather than a twisting trail.

  The road led to the long hall. When they were close, Kormak saw the roof was covered with shields. Some shone silver, others gold.

  “They are bronze, covered with gold or silver leaf,” Alfhjalm said. “It would be difficult to make the roof solid gold. We elves are more prosperous than Icelanders and have more precious metal, but our wealth is not unending. And if needed, we can pull the shields down and use them in war.”

  They entered the long hall. A fire burned low in a pit that ran the hall’s length. At the end were two high seats made of carved wood. One was empty. The other contained a handsome old man. Firelight flickered over him, making his white hair and beard shine. He wore a crown, a simple band of gold, and a gold-hilted sword lay across his knees.

  “This is Alfrad,” Alfhjalm said. “Our lord.”

  They walked the length of the hall and bowed to the old man.

  “Welcome,” he said in a deep, impressive voice. “Tell me why you came here.”

  Kormak told the story of his journey with Egil and Svart and how the old man had killed Svart and tried to kill him, all to hide two chests of silver that he didn’t want his son to inherit.

  “They are a difficult family,” the elf lord said finally. “Not good neighbors. I will send men to recover the silver from the river. There is no reason to leave it in the wate
r. You will be our guest until I decide what to do with you.”

  They bowed again and left the long hall. Once outside, Kormak gave a sigh of relief. He was not used to speaking with lords, especially elf lords. Alfhjalm took him to another building, where food lay on a table: bread and meat and ale. Kormak learned later that this often happened in Elfland. If something was needed—a meal, a tool, an article of clothing—it would be found close by, though he never saw servants bringing whatever it was. Maybe this was magic, or maybe the elves had servants who could not be seen: the Hidden Folk’s hidden folk.

  They sat down and ate. Kormak found he was hungry. “There are two high seats,” he said to Alfhjalm, after he was full.

  “The other belongs to Alfrad’s wife Bevin. She is an Irish fey who grew weary of the north and went home to Ireland, though she left a daughter here, who is named Svanhild. She is the loveliest maiden in Elfland and also the richest. I am courting her, along with many other men, but she is not interested in any of us.”

  “What is your quarrel with the family at Borg?” Kormak asked next. He was always curious. It was one of the qualities that made him a difficult slave.

  “Manyfold,” Alfhjalm replied. “We came to Iceland before humans did, leaving Norway because it became too crowded with people. There was no one here in those days except a few Irish monks. We frightened them, and they kept to small islands off the coast, while we had all of Iceland for our own. The country was empty, except for birds and foxes. There were forests of birch and aspen, which the humans have cut down, and broad fields where we could pasture our animals, black mountains with caps of white snow, and the brilliant sky of summer. As lovely as Norway had been, this seemed lovelier.

  “But then the settlers came. They were violent, greedy folk. We are less numerous than the elves of Norway, and we did not have the strength to oppose the settlers. We withdrew into the mountains to avoid them, becoming the Hidden Folk. When we traveled, it was at night, when no one could see us. That was our first quarrel with the Marsh Men. Egil’s grandfather Kveldulf would grow sleepy late in the day and sit hunched in a corner of their hall. Then his spirit would go out in the form of a huge wolf, roaming through Borgarfjord. There are no wolves in Iceland, as you must know, only foxes and a few white bears that float into the northern fjords on sheets of ice.”