So she fell asleep.
When she woke up the sun was halfway to its zenith and a fresh snow was falling lightly through the still air. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, feeling slightly more solid, more real, more focused. Omar sat beside her, rolling the rinegold ring across his palms.
“You shouldn’t play with that,” she said. “I’d hate to lose it now and have to tell everyone that you dropped it in some hole in the ground by accident.”
“It would be no great loss, fair lady,” he said slowly. He sighed deeply and turned a very serious face toward her. “While you were sleeping, I took the liberty of speaking with the dead valas inside it. All nineteen of them. As far as I can tell, this ring is only three hundred years old and none of the wise old souls within it have ever heard of anything like this plague of yours.”
Freya frowned at him. “No, no, that can’t be right. Rekavik is an ancient city, everyone knows that. The valas have served its king for at least a thousand years.”
“I’m afraid the grand, sweeping histories of your capital city have been exaggerated. Rekavik as you know it is only two hundred years old. Before that, it was just another little fishing village of no particular importance.” Omar looked away. “I’m sorry.”
“The valas must be lying to you.” Freya stood up and rested her spear across her shoulder. “They’re no fools. They know you’re a stranger, a foreigner, an outsider. And a man, no less! They must be waiting for the ring to reach a vala before they reveal their true knowledge.”
“No, fair lady. It doesn’t work that way. The souls within a sun-steel object are prisoners, not gods. They cannot deceive or command. And I have more than four thousand years of experience controlling the occupants of sun-steel weapons and trinkets. Trust me, they are telling the truth.”
“But… but that means…”
“It means they can’t help us.” Omar stood and pocketed the ring. “It means we killed poor Ivar for nothing. And it means there is no cure.”
Chapter 18. Questions
Wren lay awake in bed a long time, wrapped up tight in the blankets and squinting up at the gray daylight falling through her barred window. Eventually she kicked off the blankets and looked at her left hand. The cuts still looked like cuts, red and angry and torn. Nothing strange there. But the tiny hairs on the back of her hand looked darker. Or did they? She wasn’t sure. She couldn’t remember ever looking at them before.
She sat up and felt a tiny wave of vertigo, and when she touched her forehead she found it slick with sweat. Wren stared at the beads of moisture on her fingers.
It’s happening. And I slept half the day away, letting it happen.
Slowly, numbly, she stood up and wiped away the sweat. She straightened her clothes and draped her blanket around her shoulders, letting the cloth hang crookedly on her left side to hide her hand, just in case. And then she left the room.
She passed a maid in the corridor, and then a dozen men in the dining hall, and then found Halfdan in the snowy courtyard talking quietly with three of the elderly guardsmen. After a moment he noticed her standing there, watching him, and he turned to her. “Good afternoon to you, little vala. How is your friend?”
For a moment she thought he was talking about the mad woman in the cellar, and she nearly panicked, wondering how he knew that she had found her. But then she remembered. “Katja is fine. She’s fine.” Wren nodded. “Well, she’s the same, anyway. Alive. Snarling. Hungry. I fed her some scraps last night.”
“Good. It’s probably best to keep her happy. A full stomach might go a long way to keeping her under control.” He grinned. “Hell, if she’s anything like me, a full belly will keep her asleep, too.”
Wren tried to smile back, but her face didn’t seem to have the strength to do it. “I need to ask you something.”
Halfdan’s grin faded and he led her away from the guards toward Katja’s cell. “What is it? You look like hell.”
“I didn’t sleep well,” she said. “Last night, I wandered around a bit and ended up in the potato cellar.”
The bearded warrior grimaced. “You heard her, didn’t you? The dark woman?”
“I saw her, too. She didn’t look any better than she sounded.” Wren swallowed. “Who is she? Why is she down there?”
Halfdan sighed. “She’s down there because Skadi wants her down there, and the less said about it the better. I’ll tell you about her someday, maybe. But not today. Best you leave well enough alone, and don’t mention it to anyone. And don’t go back down there again. Understand?”
Wren saw the sorrow in the man’s eyes even as she heard the iron in his voice, so she nodded and he clapped her on the shoulder and wandered back to his men. She was still standing there, watching the men talk, when a woman’s voice said, “Skadi wants to see you.”
It was Thora standing in the doorway that led back into the cloak room. Her dark brown hair hung in carefully brushed locks and braids that shone in the sunlight and framed her pale face and dark eyes like a portrait. Her black dress clung to her body, accentuating her height and the healthy firmness of her arms and legs.
The apprentice looked more beautiful in the morning light than Wren thought any apprentice had a right to look. She certainly had never looked like that when she was tending to Gudrun. Her eyes darted down to her own appearance, noting the stained and frayed black shirt and trousers, the filthy boots, the scrawniness of her arms, and the ragged tangles of her red hair.
“I should wash up first.”
Thora nodded and went inside.
Wren waited a moment for the apprentice to leave the dining hall, and then she went inside, slipping quickly past the tables and men and through the narrow passage into the kitchen. There she found a tin bowl full of warm water and retreated to a corner, earning only one curious look from the cook, and she set about washing her face and combing her hair with her fingers. When she was done, her reflection in the bowl merely looked like a slightly cleaner and wetter version of her usual self. She sighed, and yawned, and thought of her bed.
No. Skadi wants me. I have to be awake. I have to be sharp.
Back in the dining hall she took a moment to swipe at her clothes, hoping that if only she could beat the wrinkles out they would suddenly look as nice as Thora’s dress, and when that failed she sighed and pushed through the heavy curtains into the queen’s audience chamber. It was empty.
“Back here.” Thora held back another curtain at the end of the room, and Wren cautiously stepped through. Inside was a smaller room, one dominated by the queen’s bed, and her chair, and stool, and mirror, and table.
Wren stared at the furniture. It was all wooden. Every leg, every surface, every peg and stick and handle and frame was carved from wood. Each piece had been stained a dark red and waxed and polished to shine like glass, protecting the beautiful swirling patterns of the ancient material underneath. She turned her attention to the woman seated on the bed, but every single impulse in her young body was to reach out and touched the wood, to run her hands over it, to caress it, to smell it, and to learn its secrets.
“Wren, my dear,” Skadi said. “Come, sit with me, my little seidr-sister.” She patted the blankets beside her.
Wren sat down, hoping that she didn’t look too rustic or filthy for her hostess. It was bad enough that she had to meet at all with the person who ordered Leif to kill Arn and his friends, who kept the southern woman in the cellar on the edge of starvation. But having Skadi look down on her as some country simpleton was just intolerable.
The queen said, “I’m afraid I have some unfortunate news to share with you. It’s about your friends, the hunters.”
The young vala felt her legs go cold.
Oh gods, they’re dead. They’re both dead. Freya and Erik. Leif killed them, or the reavers killed them. And that means they’re not coming back with the rinegold ring, and that means no cure for Katja, and no cure for m…
“Leif?” Skadi looked to a second doorway across from
the one that Wren had come through. The beautiful young warrior entered.
Wren felt her stomach twisting itself into knots.
Killer! You murdered poor Arn! And Freya! And now I’m going to die too!
He was even paler and thinner than she remembered from their brief encounter two nights earlier. His black hair hung in flat curtains about his lovely face and his unsmiling mouth and his cold eyes. As he moved toward the bed, Wren saw the way his left sleeve flopped against his side.
“He arrived only an hour ago,” the queen said. “Alone. Leif, tell her what you told me. She deserves to hear it from you.”
The young man inclined his head in respect, but only just. “We visited the drill and the pit, and then crossed the mountain and the hills beyond to Glymur Falls. Along the way we encountered a pair of reavers in the night, but we killed them easily enough. Yesterday morning as we reached the falls, we were attacked again, this time by eight or nine of the beasts. One bit my hand, and I was forced to hack off my own arm to escape the plague, but in doing that I fell into the river and was swept away. I awoke sometime later by the river’s edge, found myself a mule, and spent the rest of the day and night returning to the city. I’m afraid your friends are dead.”
The cold pit of horror in Wren’s stomach and all the fear and misery that was reaching its icy claws up her spine, suddenly faded. She turned the story over in her mind, and frowned. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand. If a man’s arm is cut off, he’ll soon bleed to death if he is not tended by a healer. How did you survive?”
The warrior’s eyes never wavered. “The freezing cold of the river numbed the pain. And when I crawled out of the water, I set about building a fire. It was tedious work with only one hand, but I succeeded, and when the fire was large enough, I sealed my wound with the flames.” Without hesitating, he shrugged off his shirt and let the tailored cotton slip down to reveal the firm muscles of his chest and shoulder, and the hideous blackened stump of his arm.
Wren flinched, and looked away.
Thora helped Leif back into his shirt as he said, “Your friends were fighting bravely when I last saw them, but I have no hope for their safe return. Even if they did somehow survive the reavers at the falls, I don’t see how they could hope to defeat Fenrir with only two spears.”
“I’m sorry, Wren,” Skadi said. “Not only for you, and for those brave hunters, but for all our people. I was hoping against hope, against fate and reason, that they would return with the ring and we would find a cure for this plague. It was a good plan, and worth the attempt. But now that it has failed, we must face the cold light of day together. There is no longer any hope for the poor creature in the cell outside. Freya’s sister, I believe. We will have to kill her, swiftly and mercifully, of course. Poison would be safest, I think.”
Wren nodded, her eyes fixed on the queen. It was hard to hate the woman at that moment. There was nothing sinister about her face or voice or manners. She was just a woman sitting on a bed, talking calmly, saying reasonable things.
Maybe Arn was wrong. After all, there was a lot of confusion on the mountain that day. Maybe Skadi never gave the order. Maybe Leif did it all on his own.
Suddenly she was grateful that Skadi was there to speak for her. They all knew what had to be done, but someone had to actually give the order and someone actually had to carry it out, and it eased the pain in Wren’s chest to have so many other people there to do those things for her.
If Freya and Erik had died before, back at the water mill, or in Hengavik, or in Denveller, I would have had to make that choice. I would have had to kill Katja.
For a moment Wren saw in her mind’s eye the young vala of Logarven lying on the bed in the Denveller tower. It had been her only glimpse of her before the change really began. And now, she couldn’t remember Katja’s face at all.
“Is there anything I can do?” she asked hoarsely.
“No. But perhaps you might want to get some rest,” Skadi said. “You’re looking a bit unwell.”
Wren sat up straighter and leaned back from the queen. “No, I’m fine. Although I didn’t sleep well last night. I kept hearing a strange voice.”
“Ghosts, no doubt.” Skadi smiled. “We’ve lost so many people over the last five years that the city is almost overrun with the restless dead these days. There’s a new story almost every morning of some distant relative wandering in on the aether mist to tell of the reavers, mostly. How the reavers tore down their home, murdered their families, and killed them. Horrible stories.”
Wren nodded. She felt hot and nearly shrugged off her blanket, but the cloth was rubbing on her injured hand and she could feel it pushing back and forth on the long hairs on her skin.
I probably only have a few hours left before someone sees my hand, or some other change, and then they’ll know the truth.
Then they’ll kill me.
So what’s the worst they can really do to me now?
“Last night I went looking for the sound I heard and I found a woman down in your cellar, a woman with dark skin and a strange accent,” Wren said a little too loudly and a little too quickly. She felt dizzy. “She’s as thin as a spear, and as mad as old Gudrun. She kept saying the word Morayo, but I don’t think that’s her name. Who is she?”
Skadi’s eyes narrowed a bit, but there was no surprise or anger in her expression. She said, “Wren, you told me that you saw the remains of the skyship in Hengavik. Yes?”
Wren nodded.
“The woman you found in the cellar was the pilot of the skyship. Her name is Riuza Ngozi, and she comes from a land far to the south.”
“The pilot? But I thought you said the pilot helped you to build your drill on Mount Esja. I thought she was your friend.”
“I thought so as well,” said Skadi. “But after the disaster that took the life of the king and released this plague, I learned that this pilot, Riuza, had sabotaged the drill. She never wanted the project to succeed. So she made sure the drill would never work for more than a few days at a time before needing repairs. And whenever she made those repairs, she threw out the broken parts.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“What’s wrong was that she was breaking the drill just so she could steal the old parts. After she repaired the drill, she would take the parts to a cave at the edge of the bay where she was building a metal ship so she could escape Ysland and go back home.”
Wren shrugged. “So she wanted to go home. I can’t say I admire her methods, but I understand her reason. And this pilot sounds like a clever woman. So she must have had a very good reason for going to all that trouble to build her ship in secret. She must have had a reason why she didn’t just ask for your help. Or did she? Did she ask for your help?”
Skadi wet her lips. “These foreigners are untrustworthy people. From the stories she told us, their countries are full of liars and assassins, thieves and murderers. My impression was that half of their people are so stupid or lazy that they cannot support themselves, so they labor for others, and the other half of their people are so corrupt and dishonorable that they have to build entire castles just to lock away the criminals.”
Wren’s gaze drifted to the floor as she frowned and shook her head.
That’s insane. How can any country survive when half the people are slaves and the other half are criminals?
“Shocking, I know,” Skadi said. “But true, nonetheless. They are not trusting or trustworthy people. Hence, Riuza’s crime and her punishment. What else could I do? Allow her to go back to her people, her wicked people, and let them return here with more skyships and killing machines to invade our country? I couldn’t allow that. I am queen here, and the safety of Ysland is my responsibility. I had to protect my people. You understand that, don’t you?”
Wren nodded sullenly.
“Good.” Skadi looked at the others. “And now, I’m afraid, we all have a great deal of work ahead of us. Thora, please see to our plague-stricken sister in the sout
h cell. Wren, you are welcome to stay here in Rekavik as long as you wish. If there is somewhere else you’d like to go, you’ll be well-provisioned, of course. And Leif, please remain here a moment. I want to take a look at that arm again.”
Thora left the room with a glare, and Wren stood up slowly, wondering if she ought to go with her and see that Freya’s sister died comfortably.
It’s the least I can do for her. For all of them.
As she stepped through the curtain into the audience chamber, Wren glanced back, thinking she might ask just one more question about the woman in the cellar. But through the gap in the curtain, she saw the beautiful young Leif approach the queen’s bed and strip off his shirt to reveal his milk white flesh and the scarred stump of his arm. Skadi shifted forward to the edge of her bed and reached up, and undid his belt, and pulled down his trousers.
The queen was smiling.
Wren jerked back from the curtain and turned, nearly running into the tall figure of Thora in the next room.
“All I have is mezerea,” she said.
Wren blinked. “What?”
“The only poison I have is mezerea.” Thora pressed her lips together tightly, her eyes shadowed and bloodshot. “It’s been five years since I could just walk outside to gather herbs. I’ve been using up my stores since then, and we’ve been experimenting with poisoned spears and traps on the reavers. So now, all I have left is some mezerea. Is that all right?”
Wren blinked again. “Oh. All right. As long as it’s enough. Mezerea makes people choke. I don’t know how it will work on a reaver.”
“I have enough.” Thora walked away. “Do you want to watch or not?”
No.
“Yeah. Yes. I do.” Wren followed.
“Well, it’s going to take me an hour or so to bake it into a pellet big enough to kill a reaver. I assume you want this to work the first time. There’s no need for her to suffer any more than necessary.”
“No, you’re right, thank you,” Wren said. “You know, I barely saw her face before she changed. Never spoke a word to her. But she was a vala, just like us. She deserves whatever kindness we can give her.”
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