Sisters of the Fire

by Kim Wilkins

  She looked back at him with a flat expression, her mind turned as ever to Maava and His angels, listening for their song.

  ‘You are … something,’ Modolf said quietly, and she wondered if she was meant to hear it at all.

  Hakon finished his eggs and put his plate aside, wiping his face on his sleeve. ‘Willow, today you will meet my brother. Modolf will get you in by telling him you’ve arrived as a trimartyr pilgrim, estranged daughter of Æthlric, who wants to help him destabilise or even overthrow Ælmesse.’

  ‘He’s been favourable towards your family,’ Modolf explained, ‘but only because he’s afraid of them. He will take the chance to get inside and destroy the current rule in Blicstowe, annex it to Is-hjarta, use it as a place to take the entire west coast of Thyrsland. Bradsey will fall in a day without Ælmesse to protect it.’

  ‘He needs you, Willow,’ Hakon said. ‘There’s growing discontent up here about his reluctance to raid the south. He will see a resurgence in support when he declares war on Ælmesse.’

  ‘He can speak your language, but not well.’

  ‘He was never as smart as me.’

  Willow watched their shadows on the rough wood of the wall, her own shadow dwarfed by them. Doubt stirred inside her. But no. This was the business of earthly men and she served a greater lord, so she kept her mind and will turned to Maava and let the conversation swirl around her.

  ‘I need to teach you an important phrase,’ Modolf said, facing her. ‘Are you ready?’

  She fixed her eyes on him and nodded.

  He recoiled a little. ‘You have the strangest eyes,’ he said.

  ‘What would you have me learn?’

  Modolf spoke in his lilting mother tongue, the same phrase three times over.

  Willow duly repeated it, then asked, ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘It means, I must speak with you alone, away from the eyes and ears of your guardsmen.’

  Willow repeated the phrase again. Hakon winced at her bad pronunciation, but Modolf declared it would do.

  ‘Once you are alone with him, you kill him,’ Modolf said.

  ‘Won’t he call out for help?’

  ‘The walls in the mountain hall are very thick. I will be waiting on the other side of the door. You knock twice, quickly, and I will open the door and see you out.’

  ‘But the guardsmen will know I killed him.’

  Modolf was already shaking his head. ‘Let me take care of them. I promise you, when you emerge from the inner rooms of the mountain hall, there will be nobody to witness you.’ He smiled; perhaps it was meant to look reassuring. ‘We will raise the alarm, tell them some assassin of Ælmesse came after you and killed Gisli instead. Would you mind wounding yourself, too?’

  ‘Modolf –’ Hakon started.

  But Willow nodded. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Maava will honour me if I do.’

  Modolf and Hakon exchanged glances, but Willow didn’t care what they thought of her. As long as they intended to help her bring Maava to the Ice-Heart, they could think what they wanted.

  ‘Will he be armed?’ Willow asked.

  ‘I think it unlikely,’ Modolf said.

  Unlikely. Willow turned her eyes to Hakon.

  ‘Strike him while his back is turned,’ he said. ‘For Maava.’ He rose and moved towards her. He gently took the edges of her cloak and pulled them forwards so that her sword belt was hidden, untied her scarf and removed it so that her long plait swung free. He said something in his own language, then, ‘May Maava bless your steps and your actions, Willow.’ He dropped his hands. ‘I must stay in hiding, but I have every faith in you and in our Lord.’

  ‘Is this a glimpse of my future?’ Modolf said with a theatrical lift of his hands. ‘Endless talk about Maava.’

  ‘Just replace the name of the Horse God in every sentence,’ Hakon advised. ‘It’s simple enough.’

  Willow held her tongue. There would be a time for debate about how to use Maava’s name. She would make them all see. When she was queen, she would bring the angels down upon them all to beat their mighty wings and raise their terrible voices.

  For now, she nodded as though entirely compliant. ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Let us go.’

  The ground gave out from under Skalmir and he was falling. Darkness, a long drop. He tensed against the landing, but it came sooner than he’d thought. Thudding into the ground, knocking the air from his lungs and the light from his brain.

  Both restored themselves a moment later, and he opened his eyes and it was morning, and he was lying on his back at the foot of a huge, hollow tree. Was this where he had fallen? He turned himself around, wincing against the pain in his hip and back, and called back up the tree trunk, ‘Rose? Rose? Can you hear me?’ But there was no answer. He backed out of the tree and climbed to his feet, blinking in the unexpected morning light.

  And he heard it. Deeper in the woods, to the east. Singing. Sighing. Like wind in the leaves turned to music, a voice that sounded a million aeons old, whispering like bark, rising to crescendos like a storm howling over branches.

  He had found the Singing Tree.

  Skalmir followed the sound of the singing towards the east, where the sun was rising yellow and warm, shooting beams between the trees. His footfalls were quiet but not silent, small twigs and dried leaves popping softly under him. There were no other sounds but the rustle of wind in branches, the peep of robins, the distant call of a crow. He heard no voices that indicated Rathcruick and his tribe were nearby.

  But if he found the singing tree, he would find Rowan, surely?

  The singing rose and fell in volume on the wind. It was music from a dream, not quite real, an enchantment or a wish. Deep in his heart, a flicker of suspicion. All those tales about Ærfolc, about wandering too far from the road, about their spirits singing men to their dooms. But he told himself he was going to find Rowan, he wasn’t answering to the call of seduction. He would keep a clear head.

  The forest started to thin and yet grow dark at the same time. He looked up and saw an enormous oak canopy shutting out the light, choking off the growth. In moments, he had slipped through the last stand of hazel trees and caught his first glimpse of the singing tree.

  It was a mighty oak, but not an oak, because flowers and fruit grew on it in colourful profusion. Nothing could grow in its shade, so the ground for two hundred yards around was thick with drifts of leaf fall. When the wind shook its branches, it rattled like a money purse, gold and silver jangling against one another. And the singing was exquisite. An ancient, evocative song that seemed to say to him, I know you and I will always know you. He approached its huge base, where roots were buttressed into the ground so high that he had to climb over them to circle the tree. Looking up, looking up, higher and higher its branches stretched into the misty sky. Skalmir barely noticed that the sun’s rise had become the sun’s set and now moonlight glimmered on the furthest arch of the sky.

  Then he saw the cage, hung high in the branches.

  ‘Rowan!’ he called.

  ‘Snowy!’ she responded.

  The point of an arrow was held to the back of his neck, cold and unforgiving.

  ‘Surrender,’ said Rathcruick.

  The air outside was crisp. The sky was blue but cold, and the sunshine barely penetrated Willow’s clothes. Yesterday’s rain lay in swampy puddles among the grass and Willow carefully sidestepped them as Modolf led her out and towards the mountain hall. The soil here did not drain well, and moisture froze into it in winter, making it difficult to farm. To be the king of such a starve-acre place was no great thing, Willow understood. That was why Hakon needed more land, south beyond the mountain range, in her homeland. Hakon had told her that in the mountains where Gisli’s hall was burrowed there had once been veins of rich ore – silver and bronze – that his great-grandfather’s people had mined and sold all over the known world. Willow knew herself how valuable Is-hjarta silver was, if only from Ivy’s preening about jewellery in their sha
red childhood.

  ‘But my grandfather was a spendthrift,’ Hakon had told her. ‘He burned though the wealth of the land as though it would never run out, then spent more on mining deeper and deeper, finding nothing but rock.’

  Their feet struck the road and Modolf’s hand remained under her elbow. Willow kept her head down, paying no mind to carts that rattled past or the little boys who called out, trying to sell her squid and oysters. Only when Modolf said, ‘We are here,’ did she lift her gaze and take in the magnificent oak entrance to the mountain hall. Easily twice her height and ten feet across, the doors were adorned with carved eels and squid and seaweed, moons and stars and stylised mountain peaks.

  ‘Oak from Ælmesse,’ Modolf told her. ‘Almost like being home, yes?’

  ‘Ælmesse is not my home,’ she replied.

  He smiled at her. ‘You amuse me.’

  ‘I don’t aim to amuse anyone.’

  ‘Come along, let’s go in.’

  He pushed one of the doors in and it creaked back on its mighty hinges. They found themselves standing in a portico lit only by arrow slits. The air was chill and stifling, the smell of oily candles and smoke thick in her nostrils. Two guardsmen, men in rich cloaks with well-combed hair and beards, stepped forwards. Modolf spoke to them in his own language and Willow kept her gaze still and let them talk about her.

  Maava, angels, give me a sign. Will all be well? Will I survive?

  What did it matter if she survived? To die in Maava’s name was to die in glory.

  Then why did her heart hammer so hard?

  You lack faith. You are not worthy of His love.

  Willow pressed her lips together hard and blinked away tears of shame and disappointment.

  The internal doors were opening and the guardsmen were ushering her through. Modolf followed behind and Willow put one foot in front of the other and said Maava’s name over and over in her head until there was nothing else, nothing but His name. The long, dark corridors of the mountain hall, lit only by torches in sconces, unravelled before them. So cold and so dark. How could anybody live in here? It would be like living in a tomb. When she and Hakon took control, she would insist on living somewhere brighter, with more air and less stone, no matter that it was exquisitely adorned with writhing art and set with darkly gleaming jewels.

  They passed many doors, winding further and further into the mountain, then finally they came to a wooden door, lit on either side by blazing torches that created sinister shadows among the carvings. One of the guardsmen thumped on the door twice, and the sound boomed around the corridors.

  A word was spoken from the other side, and the guardsman opened the door. Willow saw King Gisli for the first time.

  He looked nothing like Hakon, but Willow wasn’t surprised. She looked nothing like her own twin, Ivy. Gisli was handsome and fair, the very essence of an Ice-man, with white-blond hair and light eyes and a strong jaw. His body wasn’t lean and hungry like Hakon’s either: he was soft in the middle, although enormous in height. He wouldn’t be fast. She saw immediately that he was armed. His sword belt hung at his left hip, over a tunic of dark blue and gold and well-tailored pants.

  Modolf was talking quickly. Gisli’s eyes flicked from Modolf to her face and back again. She heard her own name, her father’s, Bluebell’s, but the rest was a mystery. She took the time to look around the smoky room. Deep shelves had been carved all the way around in the walls, and they were full of war booty: gold cups and shield bosses and decorated daggers. With a bolt of heat to her heart, she recognised some ornate triangles that had clearly been stolen from murdered trimartyr pilgrims.

  A long wooden table was positioned at the back of the room, in a corner that looked too dark to work in. The hearthpit was lit, the smoke escaping slowly through a tiny hole in the ceiling where a single shaft of distant daylight entered. She wondered how many feet of rock were above them, and her mind felt oppressed by the thought. Oil lanterns burned on the walls.

  Finally, Modolf stopped talking and Gisli gave the signal for him and his guardsmen to leave. Willow wouldn’t have to use her only phrase of Is-hjarta tongue. The door closed behind them and Gisli turned to her.

  ‘Will you sit with me?’ he said, in a thick accent.

  ‘Yes, I would like that,’ she said, slowly, aware that his grasp of her language wasn’t good. She had found with Hakon in the beginning that talking to him slowly was best.

  Her fingers twitched, expecting him to turn his back to lead her to the table, but he didn’t. Instead, he indicated that they would sit on the floor by the fire.

  ‘You southlanders do not like our cold,’ he said with a smile.

  She nodded, and lowered herself cross-legged to the floor. He did the same on the other side of the fire, and her pulse flicked hard at her throat as she wondered how she was going to kill him now.

  ‘Why are you here, Princess Willow?’ he asked.

  ‘To help you overthrow my father and bring the name of Maava to all of Thyrsland.’

  ‘I do not believe in Maava.’

  ‘You should. For He will punish those who have heard His name and do not come to His faith.’

  Gisli raised one eyebrow.

  Willow reminded herself of what she was here for. ‘It is of no consequence when you come to Maava, King Gisli, for you and I share a hatred for my father and my sister Bluebell and for Blicstowe. I am estranged from them, but they will accept me back into the fold readily should I show up there, and then I will let you and your men into the family compound and you will do what you need to do to end their reign. Without Æthlric or Bluebell at their lead, the army will fall into disarray. I will arrange you and your men safe passage into the city.’ All of this was a lie of course. Her family would never welcome her back, there was no way of getting a band of assassins into the family compound, and no easy passage for an army from Is-hjarta to Ælmesse without alerting the strongholds or being seen disembarking ships at one of the harbours. Did Gisli know this? He must know at least the last fact, but her story had captured his imagination nonetheless.

  ‘And what would your reward be, Princess Willow?’ he asked. ‘Would you be queen of Ælmesse?’

  ‘No, for Maava does not want women to rule. You would be its king. I seek only to avenge myself on my family, then I will lead a quiet life in a chapel, that you will build for me in the centre of Blicstowe.’

  Gisli smiled. ‘I can do that.’ He leapt to his feet and began to pace, talking in his own language, fast and excited.

  Willow counted his steps, wondering if she had time to stand and draw her sword while his back was turned, but in five steps he was around and facing her again, so she watched him a while. She needed him to be still. ‘I have another request, Gisli,’ she said.

  He pulled up. ‘Anything,’ he said.

  ‘I want to tell you about Maava.’

  He hesitated, then sat back down. ‘I suppose I can listen a while,’ he said grudgingly.

  She leaned forwards and began. The first book of Maava, which told how the world came into being, shaped by His mighty hands out of crushed stars and sparked into life with His mighty breath. Then the second book, which told how Liaava and her little twins were persecuted for still believing in Maava under a wicked king, somewhere in those warm dry parts of the world that Thyrslanders never saw.

  His eyes glazed over. He wasn’t listening, he was humouring her. So she stood and began to preach more slowly, telling of Liaava and her children burned alive for their beliefs, their bones forming the triangle that became the symbol of the newborn religion, their martyrdom a constant reminder that all must suffer if they were to make their way to the Sunlands after this pitiful, trivial life lived on earth. He barely raised his head to listen to her. No doubt his mind was already working out the details of his invasion of Blicstowe. He didn’t even seem to register as she began to pace, perhaps attributing it to her zeal, her growing fervour as she spoke of the fate of all who refused to take Maava’s n
ame as their Lord.

  ‘They shall be cursed,’ she said, feeling the weight of Griðbani on her hip. ‘They shall be sent to the Blacklands where there is no light, no hope, no warmth.’ Pacing back and forth, in front of him, telling him stories of sinners impaled on frozen rocks and tormented by Maava’s most terrible angels. By now, he had truly stopped listening. She was speaking too fast for him to understand anyway, and he didn’t notice when she slipped beside and around him in her pacing. Once around the room, twice …

  On the third time she drew her sword, slashed it down on his right arm so he couldn’t draw. He called out, began to climb to his feet, but it was too late. She plunged the blade through his back, into his heart. He fell sideways to the ground, his head thumping horribly on the stone floor, and the dark shadow of his blood pouring from his wound in dying pulses, pooling around him.

  That was the end of the reign of King Gisli of Ice-Heart, and the beginning of the time of Maava in heathen lands, she narrated in her head as she tore the front of her own gown as though brutes had set upon her, slashed open her left palm as though she had defended herself with bare hands, and smeared her face with blood for dramatic effect.

  She strode to the door and knocked twice as Modolf had told her to do.

  He opened it, peered inside and took in the sight of Gisli lying in a pool of blood, the single beam of sun caught in the dead king’s hair. A sharp intake of breath and he pushed Willow back into the room, half-closing the door. He seized her sword and slid it up into the highest shelf carved into the wall. Then he hurried to the other side of the room, to the long table, and threw over some chairs. Behind the table, his hands found a secret door she hadn’t known was there, and he opened it and then turned to her.

  ‘Go that way,’ he said, pointing her back the way they had come. ‘Scream. Call for the guardsmen. Tell them an assassin came for you through the secret door and Gisli died in trying to save you.’

  ‘They won’t understand what I’m saying,’ she said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Just make sure you sound frightened. Faint if you can manage it.’ He gave her a little push and she stumbled towards the door. ‘Act like a normal woman, not like your sister.’