The Circle of Stone: The Darkest Age

by A. J. Lake

  ‘And in the sea, the fire will go out!’ piped up a small boy with a bandage over one eye.

  ‘It surely will,’ Fritha told the child, hugging him. Over his head, she looked anxiously at Elspeth.

  ‘He won’t come back here, that’s for certain,’ Elspeth said, trying to fill her voice with confidence. I’m sure he won’t, she thought. He means to go much further than this.

  But wherever he goes, I will follow.

  Chapter Three

  It was a party of five who set off southwards the following morning. Edmund could see that Elspeth was desperate to follow Loki, and Cluaran and Cathbar seemed to share her sense of urgency.

  ‘I’ve no notion how we’ll fight him now,’ Cathbar said. ‘But if a way comes up – well, I’d rather be on the spot and able to take it. It’s that, or stand by while he goes on burning.’ He had gone out with a rescue party the day before, finding one or two survivors, but many more of the dead.

  Ari said he would stay with his people: as Cluaran had predicted, many of them had already started to look to him as their leader, and they left him deep in discussion with the elders about ways to open up new caves for those made homeless and replenish the supplies that had been destroyed.

  He shook hands with Cluaran before they left. The pale man looked somehow older, Edmund thought, his face marked with the horror of yesterday’s loss, and maybe with his new responsibilities. ‘I’ll not see you again,’ he said. ‘My place is here now.’

  Cluaran nodded. ‘Did we do wrong, Ari?’ he asked. ‘If we had not meddled with Loki, this would not have happened.’

  Ari shook his head. ‘We both know he would have broken free, in our children’s lifetimes if not in ours. And the sword . . . Ioneth . . . came to us now.’ His face twisted. ‘Find her again, Cluaran. For all our sakes.’ He turned to Elspeth and Edmund. ‘If the sword returns, strike well,’ he said to them. ‘Wherever you go, and however you fare, our people’s friendship goes with you.’

  Fritha and her father, to Edmund’s surprise, chose to stay with the Ice people too, at least over the winter. Fritha’s skill as a nurse had made her valuable to the community already, and she could not bear to leave the motherless children. Grufweld’s trade, charcoal-burning, was less useful to them – the Ice people had little use for fire, except sometimes for cooking – but his strength, and his skills at building and hunting, would be much needed in the days to come.

  Fritha hugged Edmund and Elspeth fiercely before they left.

  ‘You are vin-fastr . . . true friends,’ she told them. ‘You will kill this monster, and then you will come back to see us. But if you cannot come . . . I will remember you always.’

  ‘I’ll come back some day,’ Edmund promised, mortified to find that his eyes were pricking. Before he could turn away Fritha leant forward and kissed him. Edmund felt his face glowing, and the place where her cool lips had touched his cheek burned for a long time afterwards.

  Grufweld waved away their apologies for the trouble they had brought on him. Cluaran offered the charcoal-burner a gold coin, given to him by the king for his journey, but Grufweld courteously refused: the nearest villagers had little use for coins, and besides, hospitality was a matter of honour and need, not a thing to be bartered. Cathbar, however, was not to be put off: after pumping Grufweld’s hand repeatedly, he insisted on making him a present of his hunting knife.

  ‘Least I could do,’ he said gruffly, as they walked away. ‘He lost a good axe back in that fire, as well as his knife – and those Ice folk know nothing about metal.’

  And now they made their way across the snow plain towards the coast. They had left all their supplies with the Ice people, taking only the two horses, Cluaran’s gold coin and his remaining bag of silver. The horses were much needed: Elspeth, for all her eagerness to be gone, was not yet fully healed, as Cathbar had feared, and yesterday’s walk had worn her out. Well before noon (though it was hard to judge with the sunless sky), she had begun to stumble almost at every step, and Cluaran had made her ride. The other horse was ridden by Eolande, who sat straight-backed and still, her face empty.

  The snow grew thinner as they went, and the trees grew closer on both sides. Around noon they were walking through pines again, mixed with leafless birch and aspen. Where the pines were thickest there was no snow at all, and Edmund was glad to feel the carpet of needles beneath his feet again. He thought that Cluaran walked with a new spring in his step too, even while leading his silent, blank-eyed mother.

  Elspeth was very silent as she rode. Edmund walked close by, stealing anxious glances at her. He knew she preferred to walk, but she rode well enough, and she did not seem to be in pain. Her wounded hand was healing well, with only a dark-red mark across the palm. But her gaze was often turned inwards, and he often saw her face crease with distress. He spoke little to her: he feared he already knew what troubled her, and he could think of nothing to say that would give any comfort.

  The trees thinned, and suddenly there was the distant roar of the sea. Edmund looked up at his friend – surely that sound would cheer her! But to his horror, her eyes were full of tears. Almost soundlessly, she muttered, ‘No! Not again...’

  And at that moment Edmund caught it too, and his heart sank. With the far-off sound came a scent – not the sea, but the acrid smell of smoke.

  Elspeth was white and shaking by the time they reached the harbour village. A pall of thick, greasy smoke rose from ruins so charred it was impossible to tell what they had once been. Edmund found himself dragging his feet as they approached, and realised that the others were doing the same: as if to put off the inevitable story of terror and misery. Cluaran, Edmund saw with a jolt, was almost as pale as Elspeth.

  ‘This is the place where I landed,’ the minstrel said quietly. ‘Did I bring this on them?’

  ‘That’s foolish talk,’ Cathbar insisted. ‘He was always going to attack somewhere!’ But Cluaran seemed not to hear him.

  There was a row of huts that had escaped the fire, and a few people in front of them: two women, looking out to sea, and a middle-aged man standing in a doorway. Cathbar hailed the man, introducing themselves as travellers.

  ‘Looks like you’ve had trouble here,’ he said. ‘We’ll be glad to help, if we can.’

  The man wiped his hands on his long apron and looked at them without replying. Edmund wondered if he were simple, or if he had been struck dumb by shock, but after a while he found his voice. It was hoarse, as if he had trouble speaking, but Edmund could understand enough of the Dansk tongue by now to make him out.

  ‘I thank you, but there’s nothing you need to do. We are all well here.’

  Simple-minded, Edmund thought; and Cathbar clearly thought the same. ‘That’s a bad fire you’ve had,’ he tried again. ‘Was nobody hurt? No one’s house burned?’

  ‘No,’ said the man, and started to laugh. While they gaped at him, the women came up.

  ‘It’s true,’ one of them said. ‘We thought we were dead for sure – but every one of us escaped.’ She smiled at them, her eyes shining. ‘We were saved.’

  The village had scant hospitality to offer, but the prospect of telling strangers about their miraculous escape brought most of them out of their homes with small gifts of food. The travellers were seated around the fire in the chief’s hut and given mugs of sour beer, while the chief’s wife told them the tale and a dozen other villagers crowded in the doorway to add their own details.

  The burned buildings, the woman told them, were their boathouse and drying-sheds. Two nights before, one of the sheds was struck by lightning out of a clear sky: they heard a thunderclap, saw a bolt of white light and ran out of their houses to see the blaze already taking hold. They fought it as best they could with buckets of sea-water, but to no avail: long before dawn the fire was raging through both sheds (‘fiercer than a storm,’ said the chief’s wife, with gloomy relish), and had caught the boathouse where they kept one of the two passenger boats that the men used to
ferry travellers to the mainland.

  ‘Everyone was crying!’ put in a young boy. They knew that the dried fish that was to feed the village for the rest of the winter must have gone up in smoke, and with it all the fishing nets, their livelihood. The boat, their finest, gave them all their contact with the outside world, as well as extra income in the summer months; now it, too, would be gone. And then the wind had changed, and a corner-post from the shed had crashed down on the other side, carrying the fire towards their homes.

  ‘Such screaming and running there was!’ cried one of the listeners.

  ‘I thought us all dead and buried for sure.’

  ‘But then . . . he came.’

  There was a man, a stranger, appearing out of nowhere. One moment they had been running for their homes, desperate to save young children and treasured possessions. Then there was a voice behind them, loud and commanding, and the man was there, fire burning all around him, with a sack of fish over his shoulder and his arms full of nets.

  ‘Beautiful as an angel he was,’ a young woman sighed.

  Some said he walked through the fire without being burned; others, that he moved too quickly for the fire to touch him. It was certain that he had saved their livelihood. He led them in extinguishing the burning beam that had threatened their homes, stamping out the straying flames himself. (‘And those fires, they vanished as if they were scared of him,’ said a man.) Then he helped them to rescue their boat from the burning boathouse, taking one rope himself with the strength of a dozen men. He did not rest until the fire was contained; their homes and possessions safe. Then he joined them in their celebrations while it burned itself out behind them.

  He would give no name, the chief’s wife said, and would take no reward. He said he was a traveller, come here to find passage south to the mainland. They did not often make the journey in winter, but this time . . . The chief himself, her husband, had gone as boat-master, and young men had fought to be allowed to row. They had left this morning on the very boat that the hero had saved from the flames.

  There was silence after the woman finished her story. Edmund did not dare to catch Elspeth’s eye. The image was all too clear in his mind: the fire ball crashing down, straight from the devastation of the ice caves; and Loki, the deceiver, taking on the form of a handsome hero, striding forth to resolve a disaster of his own making. What mortal man could have so much power over fire? For an instant he saw the same realisation on the faces of Cathbar and Cluaran – then Cluaran shot him a warning glance, fractionally shaking his head.

  Edmund wanted to shout these credulous people out of their delusion. It was Loki! Loki – the monster who started your fire, who has murdered hundreds like you. How could you be so blind? But he knew exactly how. Looking at the bright faces around him, he knew that the villagers had been given their own miracle: nothing he could say would persuade them to give it up.

  ‘Truly a tale of wonders,’ said Cluaran at last, and there was just the right tone of awe in his voice. ‘Mistress,’ he went on, ‘we too are travellers, though no heroes; hoping to take passage for the south. It’s a poor time of year for a voyage, I know . . . but your story has fired me with a wish to see this man for myself. I can see from my companions’ faces that they feel the same. To which port did your men take him?’

  The woman’s face glowed. ‘You’re right: not many people can say they have looked on a true hero! He went to Alebu, in the Danish kingdom.’

  ‘And,’ Cluaran went on smoothly, ‘you said you had a second boat?’

  The other boat was much older than the one saved from the fire: unwieldy and somewhat battered; but even so, the villagers were not entirely happy to let it go out in winter before the first had returned. But Cathbar pronounced the boat sound, and when Cluaran presented the village with the two horses as well as the hire of the boat in silver, the remaining boat-masters agreed to find another crew but explained that they would not be able to leave until the next morning. Cluaran passed himself and Cathbar off as enterprising cloth merchants looking for a new market in the far northern towns, and Eolande, Edmund and Elspeth as a widow with her children, now under his protection and returning to her family after her husband’s death. Eolande’s silence and abstraction made the tale easier to believe, and no one commented on how little Edmund looked as if he could be her son, or Elspeth’s brother. Edmund suspected the villagers were too absorbed in their own story to pay much heed to anyone else’s.

  They had little difficulty in finding a crew: the remaining young men of the village were eager for the chance to see their hero again, and the old boat was soon fitted. They set sail that same day, heading south on grey, choppy waters. The town of Alebu was a little way down the western coast of Daneland, the sailors said as they took up their oars. The journey should not take much longer than two days.

  In fact, it took three, in fierce winds which blew them off course for the first day. Edmund was disturbed to find how uncomfortable the motion made him at first. Every pitch of the boat reminded him of his first sea journey only a few weeks ago on the Spearwa, and the deadly storm that had ended that voyage. The shipwreck, and the attack of the dragon Torment, had set him on a path he still found hard to believe; given him a skill he had never wanted, which set him apart from his own people; and sent him on this endless round of travelling, from which it seemed he might never be free.

  But it had also given him Elspeth. He looked at his friend’s face as she stood in the boat’s prow. Elspeth was happier than he had seen her since their descent to Loki’s cave. She was still weak, and fretted that she could not be more than a passenger on the ship, but the colour had come back to her face, and the same motion that unsettled him seemed to calm her. She spent much of the voyage gazing over the waves, her hair whipping about her face; cradling her right hand with her left. She seemed glad of Edmund’s company when he came to stand beside her, but neither of them spoke aloud of Loki, or of what might lie ahead.

  The squally wind proved a friend to them in one way. For the first time in days the sky cleared, and the sight of the sun raised everyone’s spirits, though it did little to counter the cold. Cathbar and Cluaran took their share of the rowing, and even Eolande, sitting near the bow of the boat, seemed a little more alert. As he grew more used to the swing of the waves and the close living on board, Edmund began to feel a sense of escape – as if they were leaving the nightmare behind, rather than following it.

  On the morning of the third day the helmsman sighted land, and as the sun reached its height they came at last to the port of Alebu.

  Far to the south of them, in the kingdom of Wessex, the king’s advisor, Aagard, stepped back from his fire, shaken by the images he had seen there. He was too old, he thought despairingly: wise enough to see the threat and know it for what it was, but without the strength of vision to follow it – or to challenge it.

  ‘Loki goes south; that’s certain,’ he muttered. ‘And our friends pursue him but are blind to the truth. The demon-god has split himself into more than one and walks in many guises and travels faster than a mist through the land.’

  The destroyer was still fettered in some way, Aagard was sure of that. Years ago, he had caught a glimpse of that mind, and seen the fires there. Nothing but total annihilation would satisfy Loki if he were free.

  His aim now must be to free himself completely, then. And he would work through trickery, or by bending others to his will . . . as he had done before, here in Wessex. The mad sorcerer Orgrim still lived, confined in the king’s strong-house, blind and barely able to speak, now that his master had abandoned him. But when he had served Loki, he had controlled the kingdom.

  ‘Trickery; deceit; working through others,’ the old man said aloud. ‘But which others?’

  His divination was over: there would be no more visions tonight. But as he stared, unseeing, into his small fireplace, he thought he saw fire like a red cloud, spreading to engulf the world, and black smoke that quenched the sun.

/>   Chapter Four

  The port of Alebu was more familiar to Elspeth than any place she had seen in the Snowlands: a harbour town, busy even on the winter evening when they arrived: its docks scattered with sailors, merchants rich and poor, and the drifters who came to find a day’s work or to fleece unwary travellers. The people spoke Dansk, as Fritha and her father had done, but their accent was closer to the one that Elspeth had heard when she first learned the language aboard the Spearwa. She felt she should be at ease in a town like this, with one foot in the sea; but she could find none of it reassuring. The three days aboard the boat, even with a foolish crew who would not recognise her as a fellow sailor, had felt like a return to her old life with her father, when there had been no sword, no demons to fight, and no constant, nagging sense of failure and guilt. With her first step on land, all that heaviness returned, and with it her sense of urgency. Loki was here somewhere. She had no idea how to find him; still less how to stop him – but she must! She looked down at her right hand, healed now but for the wedge-shaped band of red across the palm, and thought she felt an answering throb there. Her head swam suddenly, and she stumbled, throwing out her arms for balance.

  ‘Elspeth!’ Edmund was beside her in a moment, his face filled with concern. Cluaran came up on the other side to take her arm.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she told them. ‘Just not used to being on land.’ The cobbles under her feet did feel strange to her, as they left the harbour and made their way past the first houses.

  ‘We’ll find an inn,’ Cathbar said. ‘You need to get your strength back.’