The Book of the Sword (Darkest Age)

by A. J. Lake

  When Eolande turned to look at her, the tall woman’s face was composed again. ‘I was not there,’ she said. ‘Brokk took Ioneth to his forge in the mountains, and returned alone. He said that the sword was forged, and that Ioneth had given herself to its making. But there was no sword to see. Many of the Ice people said that he was lying, that he had failed, even that Ioneth had discovered his failure and that he had killed her. When Erlingr threatened him, he stood in front of all the people and stretched out his arm, calling on the name of Ioneth – and a dazzling light sprang from his hand. They believed him then. Soon afterwards he went to fight Loki, alone. I never saw him again.’

  They went on in silence for a while. Elspeth felt she should say some words of sympathy for the woman’s loss, but the words would not come, and Eolande had drawn ahead of her, moving tirelessly forward even when the channel dropped sharply, or a blockage of stones forced them to climb. As she followed, Elspeth was struck by a wave of exhaustion that made her stagger. We can’t go on much longer at this pace, she thought, as she scrambled and slid down another steep drop. And then the ice levelled out around her, and they were standing on a plateau near the edge of the glacier. Eolande looked around her intently, as if to see how far they had come down the mountain.

  The sun was rising high above them in a pale sky the colour of a robin’s egg, and now that they were lower Elspeth could see the peak of Eigg Loki soaring above them, dazzling white against the blue. But below them, the ice seemed to go on for ever, separating into huge drifts and gullies before it merged with the snow fields below.

  ‘We must hurry,’ Eolande muttered, and took her arm. For an instant Elspeth felt the sword’s power scorching through her from wrist to shoulder, but the pain died down at once, settling back to a dull throbbing as she followed Eolande down another gully, making for the glacier’s edge.

  Eolande slowed her pace a little, so that Elspeth could walk beside her. ‘Eigg Loki burned for three days,’ she said, her voice very quiet. ‘The mountain shook, and the entrance to Loki’s prison was blocked by falling rocks and ice. There was no more fire in the land after that: the snows returned, and Brokk was honoured by some as the man who had subdued Loki – though others cursed him because he had led so many to their deaths. Neither he nor the sword was ever found. A party went in search for him, and found only the gauntlet that Brokk had forged to hold the sword, lying on the ground by the stonefall. It was locked in a chest, hidden and forgotten … until you came upon it.’

  Visions of fire and flashing metal filled Elspeth’s mind: the grey-haired man, striking once and falling, wrapped in flame; the same man, gazing in horror at the sword that had joined itself to his arm; the slender girl, smiling faintly as her body faded. And someone else. In her vision of the cave there had been a third person: a young man, whose face she had not seen. He had followed Ioneth and begged her not to sacrifice herself. Take me instead! he had pleaded. She wondered who he had been, and why Eolande had not mentioned him.

  ‘Was there another man –’ she asked, and stopped. They had reached the edge of the glacier. They stood side by side on a shelf of ice, with rock showing beneath. Below them to the left, the ice swept downwards, its edges sculpted into strange whirls, peaks and clefts. To their right, the rock descended into a jumble of huge boulders. Eolande began lowering herself from the plateau down to the rock a few feet beneath, and Elspeth swung herself around to do the same. She could see right up the mountain now: the whole route they had taken. There was the ledge they had gone down at first, with a faint line along it marking their footprints, winding upwards to the black gash of the crevasse … and there, at the top of it, just where the crevasse narrowed to nothing, were three tiny figures.

  ‘Oh, look!’ she cried. ‘They’re coming after us! Eolande, we have to wait –’

  She broke off as Eolande put a warning hand on her arm. The tall woman was looking up at a point above the three figures. Elspeth felt another stab of pain in her right arm, and this time the crystal sword leapt out – at the same moment as the sky went dark above them.

  The dragon soared overhead, utterly silent. The edge of one wing glinted silver as it banked, and one huge eye glittered at her. For the rest, it was a blue-black shadow, cutting off the sun. Even at this distance, Elspeth could feel the malice in the black-streaked eye. Let it not see them! she prayed, and felt a moment’s intense relief as the creature swooped over Edmund and the others without slowing.

  Then the eye rolled towards her. The huge wings folded back, and the dragon was descending, with terrible speed.

  Elspeth scrambled down until her feet were on solid rock, and raised both hands to hold the blazing sword over her head. As the dragon dived towards her she thrust violently upwards, and felt the sword’s point jarring against scales.

  Next moment, something rammed into the back of her fur jacket, and she felt herself lifted into the air. One of the talons on the creature’s trailing foreleg must have hooked her clothes. She screamed, and flailed wildly with the sword as she was swept around in a great arc with the other taloned foot swinging towards her, claws open to clutch at her. Then it had her around the waist, arms still free but waving uselessly, while the sword flashed like a lantern in a storm.

  The dragon swooped once more, sickeningly, to where Eolande stood rooted to the spot. As its free foot seized her, the woman folded up as if fainting. Elspeth writhed in the clawed grip, trying desperately to find something to hit, but the dragon held on to her. She heard its roar of triumph like thunder all around her – and then it was plummeting with her towards the foot of the mountain.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I was soon to see Loki’s power. The snows were melting from the mountains, leaving the blackened scars of the demon’s fires; but the glaciers remained. And suddenly the men we gathered to bind Loki had a closer threat to face: the mountains around Eigg Loki shook, and from the glaciers came dragons to harry us – white dragons, filling the sky with their wings.

  – Loki has called them from the ice, said the Fay; but the beasts’ teeth could still bite, and their claws draw blood. Their frozen breath felled even the Ice people, and neither their arrows, nor the Stone men’s axes, nor the magics of the Fay, could quell the creatures.

  Edmund hung on grimly as his foot slipped yet again. The rope securing him to Fritha tightened and she looked down with concern. He forced a smile and waved at her to go on, then went back to studying the ice for handholds, concentrating on not looking down.

  It was Fritha who had argued for climbing up the ice, and rather to Edmund’s surprise, Cathbar had agreed. Edmund had wanted to go down the mountain. ‘The woman said this lair she’s taking Elspeth to is lower down – and anyway, how could we find a way up that?’ he had protested, sweeping an arm over the expanse of ice above them.

  But Fritha had disagreed. The crevasse widened rapidly below them, she pointed out, stretching so far that they could not see where it ended, but it narrowed to a crack only a hundred yards above. She thought she could find a path up a little way back along the ledge. She rummaged in her pack for a rope, which she tied around her waist and Edmund’s, and also produced a metal spike secured to a loop of leather and a bag of wooden pegs, both of which she clipped to her belt. The route upwards that she pointed out looked like any other stretch of ice to Edmund, but Cathbar had looked up at it from one side, then the other, and nodded. And Edmund had agreed to go with them, looking beyond the crevasse at the two tiny figures, now almost out of sight as they picked their way across the glacier below.

  ‘Reach up here, by my foot,’ Fritha called to him, returning his smile. ‘You climb well.’ She turned back to the ice face, carefully chipping out handholds and footholds with the metal spike. Edmund, grabbing the hold she had pointed out to him, wished he believed her. Below him Cathbar was climbing steadily, his movements sure and controlled. His face showed worry, but Edmund knew it was nothing to do with the climb: the last time he had glanced back at him th
e captain had been looking down, watching the narrow ridge that Elspeth and Eolande had followed. They were no longer visible, but Cathbar had stared along the ridge as if he could still see them. At first Edmund had tried to follow the captain’s gaze, but the white immensity below them was dizzying, and he quickly turned back to the mountain face.

  He had tried again to use their eyes, both Eolande’s and Elspeth’s, with no more success than before. Elspeth’s sight had always been closed to him: it seemed the sword made her impermeable. But he had never met another living being who could block his gift – except for another Ripente, Orgrim, who had been his uncle Aelfred. Could Eolande be Ripente? The touch of her mind had not felt like Orgrim’s. He remembered his uncle’s mocking laughter, seeping into his mind like mist, and shuddered, pushing the thought away.

  Fritha had paused, hammering a peg into the ice with the end of the spike. Waiting below her, his face pressed sideways into the ice, Edmund wondered how much further they had to go. He could see the crevasse only a few feet away, narrower already, but still too wide to jump – and the very thought of launching himself over that dark abyss, with nothing but sheer ice beyond it, made him cling to the freezing surface beneath him. He could feel the cold seeping through his fur gloves, making his fingers stiff and clumsy. He tried to drive away thoughts of the distances below him; the black drop so close; how easy it would be to lose his hold. The rope holding him to Fritha seemed very thin – and if he were to fall, really fall, he would take her with him. He was glad when Fritha started upwards again, driving away all thoughts but the search for a firm foothold.

  Slowly, the crevasse alongside them narrowed. Edmund reached the place where Fritha had hammered pegs into the ice, feeling a surge of reassurance as he grasped the rough wood of the first one. It felt solid and reliable amid the slippery ice – like a link with the ground, unreachably far below.

  He was able to make faster progress after that. When the crevasse was no more than a foot-wide crack, Edmund looked up and saw what Fritha had been aiming for. Above her head, the ice jutted out in a shelf, and changed colour: greyish against the surrounding white. There was solid rock below the surface: this was where the crevasse came to an end.

  ‘This part will be hard,’ Fritha called down to him, ‘but we can rest up here, I think, and then find a way down.’

  It was harder than anything Edmund had yet done. Fritha had to loosen the rope while she hammered in her pegs, edge outwards and finally lean backwards to reach the lip of the shelf. Edmund held himself quite still, peppered with shards of ice from Fritha’s hammering. His hands grew numb, and as he watched Fritha leaning herself almost horizontally over his head, he could not imagine himself doing the same. What will I do? I’ll be stuck here – can Cathbar climb past me? Can I even get down again?

  Fritha grasped the edge and hauled herself up in one movement, disappearing. Then her head appeared over the edge of the shelf, flushed and triumphant.

  ‘It will hold us all,’ she told him. ‘Come, Edmund!’

  She gestured to him to climb on, but Edmund could not move. His foot was on a peg, firm and dependable. Above it was only a snag in the ice … he knew he would slip …

  ‘Go on, lad,’ came Cathbar’s voice below him. ‘Up to your right.’

  Edmund glanced to the right: yes, Fritha had carved out a hole there that he could reach. He went up another two steps, till the lip of the shelf was over his head, and stretched an arm behind him to grab the edge. His arms were too short to reach it.

  ‘Lean back!’ Cathbar called. Fritha added something encouraging from just above him, but he could not see her now. There was nothing but grey-white ice above his head. How could he throw himself backwards? He pressed himself against the wall again, afraid to move a muscle. I can’t go up or down, he thought. How long before I fall?

  The rope around his waist was tugged gently, and Fritha’s voice came to him again. ‘Edmund – you can do it. To help Elspeth.’

  Edmund reached up and backwards once more, and this time found one of Fritha’s pegs. He grasped it, and without giving himself time to think, lunged back with his other arm. One foot came away from the ice wall, and he kicked forward, trying to gain a purchase. Then his flailing hand found the edge, and next moment he was grabbed by both arms and yanked outwards and upwards. He cracked his chin painfully on the shelf as Fritha hauled him on to it. For a while after that he just lay on his face until the world stopped spinning, grateful for the feel of a solid surface under him. Fritha sat beside him, her hand on his arm.

  ‘Thank you,’ he managed after a while. ‘I thought I was going to fall.’

  Fritha nodded gravely. ‘It’s hard if you haven’t ever done it,’ she agreed. ‘But for Elspeth, you will do many things, no?’

  Edmund sat up, feeling awkward. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘Elspeth and I have been through a lot together … she’s saved my life more than once. I’ve come to know her well, I think. I know she sometimes seems to think of nothing but that sword, but …’ He tailed off. ‘She’s my friend,’ he finished.

  Fritha was looking at him solemnly; even with a trace of sadness, he thought. ‘I would like to have a friend like that,’ she said.

  Cathbar pulled himself on to the shelf. ‘I’m getting old!’ the captain puffed as he sat heavily down beside them. ‘But you did well, girl, finding that route. Now, how do we get down?’

  Edmund looked around. The shelf extended for several feet along the mountainside before merging back into the ice sheet. From the top it was brilliantly white: snow had collected on it, and the sun had risen high enough to shine on them now that they were out of its shadow. They could see much more of the mountain from here, but Edmund was still unwilling to look down. Fritha, though, jumped to her feet and went to inspect the ice on the further side of the shelf, looking for possible routes.

  ‘She’ll find a way if anyone can,’ Cathbar said, looking after her approvingly. ‘If we’re only in time,’ he added in a lower voice.

  ‘In time for what?’ Edmund asked, but the captain shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know myself, lad. But I do know that woman wasn’t telling us half of what she’s doing here. I think she’s one of the Fay – she has their look about her.’

  ‘The Fay? You mean the magic people?’ Edmund was confused. ‘My mother used to tell me stories about them. Don’t they need the woods and fields to survive? How could one of them live here?’

  ‘Oh, they can go anywhere – places the rest of us can’t even find,’ Cathbar said. There was a note of unease in his voice. He stopped as Fritha came back to them, her face alight.

  ‘I found them!’ she exclaimed. ‘Come and look!’

  They followed her along the shelf and looked where she pointed. The sun was glaring off the ice, but they could make out the ledge they had been following with Eolande, winding down the side of the mountain past the crevasse. As it descended the ice around it grew rougher, rising about it in ridges until the path itself was lost. But among the ridges, only a little way further down, were two tiny figures, one in grey; a smaller one in brown. Their progress was slower now as they picked their way through the ice furrows.

  ‘They’re not so far,’ Cathbar said, excitement rising in his voice. ‘We can still get to them. Do you have a way down, Fritha?

  ‘I think so,’ Fritha said, pointing. A sound stopped her: a distant thumping, regular and soft, but heavy, and growing stronger.

  ‘Avalanche?’ muttered Cathbar.

  Fritha shook her head, but her face was suddenly pale. The noise grew louder, and now it had a new edge to it…

  Edmund found himself at the very edge of the shelf, shouting down to Elspeth – screaming her name as if he could make her hear him. For an instant he almost thought she had: a spark of light blazed in the smaller figure’s hand, and he knew that the sword had woken. At the same instant the sun was blotted out, and the dragon was above them.

  Cathbar pulled him back so violently t
hat he fell down in the snow. Fritha had already thrown herself down – but the dragon did not slow as it soared overhead. They felt the gale as the great wings flapped, once, twice; and then they were above the creature as it swooped down the mountainside. It struck once – and two tiny shapes were dangling from its claws.

  Edmund reached out for the dragon’s eyes. For a second he saw Elspeth’s face, full of terror, the sword blazing uselessly in her hand. Let her go! he screamed at it in his head. But behind the dragon’s ferocity he felt something else: another mind, cool and full of power, guiding the creature downwards.

  He blinked, and opened his eyes to see the dragon sweeping down to the very bottom of the mountain, where the ice rose in great sculptured shapes that hid even its bulk from sight. He strained his eyes after it, but it did not reappear.

  ‘So it has a lair at the foot of the mountain.’ Cathbar had already recovered himself: his face was grim with new purpose. ‘Well, girl, you show me the way down. I’ve hurt this beast before; I can do it again.’

  Fritha was crying. ‘The dragon mountain! Why did we come here?’ she wept, and added something else in her own language. Cathbar put his hand on her shoulder.

  ‘That’s foolishness, girl. Elspeth would have come here whether you brought her or not.’

  Fritha scrubbed a hand over her eyes and knelt to gather her climbing tools. ‘Come, then,’ she said. ‘The way is not straight – but I take you down, as fast as we can go.’

  ‘No,’ Edmund said.

  The thought that had just come to him was so crazy that he almost lost courage as they turned to stare at him. ‘Fritha,’ he forced himself to go on. ‘You called this a dragon mountain. So they definitely used to live here?’

  ‘You heard her,’ Cathbar snapped, as Fritha nodded. ‘Now are we going to get moving?’