A Single Bone
Turn your gaze to the North and sharpen your blades,
For the Enemy’svargen are coming.
—Northern counting-rhyme
By the time the sun fell below the westron horizon a great silvery fog was breathing from every crack, fissure, and ravine in the Glass. The men drew close with Karas in the lead, for he was counted the best pathfinder among them and even the Elder deferred to his skill.
Daylight died, but the dark was not complete. Even during the worst of freeze strange lights, in colors both earthly and indescribable, rose from the claw-marks in the Glass; now, with the melt whispering below the surface those heatless flickers returned, reflected through chilldamp vapor.
Arn was a shadow at my side, the Northerners deeper blots amid shifting freeze-veils. The forms of the Elder were limned with a faint bluish cast different than the unwholesome flares elsewhere; the vision reminded me of our flight to Nithraen. The mist lacked some essential quality of the deep fog upon the Elder Roads, but even a volva would be hard put to describe exactly how.
The horses plodded on, and I could not have said which direction we wandered. Often I thought we doubled along the edges of deep ice-chasms, retracing our footsteps; a few times Karas pulled rein and we halted while he dismounted, vanishing into the night to return a few breaths later, and we would go on.
Our halts grew shorter, the jog-trots longer. When sunlight found us again even Arn’s great charger hung his head, though the mist flushed rose and gold for a short while before grey crept in to muffle every breath, every footfall. Karas stayed before us, and as the day mounted we slowed again.
The melt was still a mere trickle, but our mounts’ hoofsound changed—snow was hollowing out underneath us, and each drift would soon be a false friend at best. Sedge-banks and other frozen vegetation loomed at irregular intervals, and their blurred edges were reminiscent of a lich’s mantle, tattered stains spreading in defiance of wind or calm.
Nothing looks familiar when the clouds come to earth. But at least we did not hear the hunting horns again—until after sunset.
Another night spent a-saddle. Arn swayed wearily, and I am certain she slept as she rode though her hand did not loosen upon her bucketed spear. Half the Northerners’ saddles were empty in the darkness, and though there was no wolfsong I often caught a gleam of eyes to one side or the other as they ranged about our small herd—not as predators but as sheepdogs, protecting and guiding.
Had the weather grown much warmer we may well have vanished into the morass, but on the third day the mist turned freezing and the snow firmed. It was a mercy of short duration, we well knew, and every face was grim or worried. The Elder spoke often to the horses, whispering courage into their ears, running their hands down slim pale legs, sharing vital heat and strength. Fodder was produced, I know not from where—perhaps by the same seidhr that had carried my lost trunk from Dun Rithell.
I longed to help. Neither Aeredh nor Daerith would allow me to, turning aside my attempts with graceful though mostly silent courtesy. And I held myself so stiffly in the saddle, seeking to avoid sharp jabs or greater burning from the thing tangled inside my ribs, that I could not concentrate enough to whisper a thread of strength into my poor mare, whose eyes stayed half-closed even at noon. She moved as if dreaming, and I did not blame her.
Then, in the deep cold darkness before another dawn, I realized we were struggling uphill. Back and forth up the incline, gentle zigzags like hurried stitching to reinforce a seam or protect a raw woven edge from unraveling. Our route managed to avoid sagging drifts, and miraculously none of the horses faltered upon the slope. Only the Elder, Arn, and I remained mounted, yet the beasts continued trudging together, held to their task by wills much greater than their own.
We had much in common, the pale, slim-legged, dark-eyed creatures and one tired volva.
A short rest, a swallow of sitheviel, and I could barely struggle back a-horse even with Arn’s aid. We had no sooner started off, the riderless horses plodding steadily and Arn’s charger blowing out a dissatisfied sigh, when a terrible brazen cry lifted, far nearer than the hunting horns had been before.
The fog cringed in thick ropes. The horses did not halt, but white showed about their eyes and every set of ears was pricked, including mine. I looked to my right at the shadow that was Arn, and the faint gleam from her spearblade watched me in return.
Yet when dawn came, stinging red like spilled mortal blood in the east, the mist had thinned to a smoke-thin veil and the undulating ground bore no fissures or masses of winterdead scrub. A wandering breeze hummed over well-packed, wind-sculpted snow, and the thick coppery tang of incipient thaw rode heavily upon its back.
Aeredh rode at my left, Daerith at the head of the ragged column, Yedras on his own weary mare last of all.
“Taurain,” the Crownless said, barely audible over the sound of moving air. “Between the Mistwood and the Gasping, with Dorael at the southron end. There are no few Secondborn settlements here.”
I nodded, though I could not concentrate enough to see again features of the maps studied in Laeliquaende’s treasure-trove. The snow was not quite hard as stone, but not nearly so soft as the Glass’s slog either; where the winter blanket was scraped away by wind the prickles of long winter-yellowed grass showed through.
The Taurain only looked flat, gently rolling in every direction. At first the sudden space, the sweep of iron-clouded sky and rippling white, was almost shocking, and I was glad the light rose by slow degrees as the mist wore off. Old tracks crisscrossed the hillocks and dips—fox, hare, musk-mouse, long-glutton, lemming, the tiny scratches of bird feet, the prints of horned deer and wolves too. Shadows melded out of the grey distance, and the Northerners in their black cloth loped to join us one at a time, swinging into the saddle between steps, maneuvers so perfectly timed the horses did not even flick an ear. Last of all was Eol, shaking blown snow from his hair, glancing up and down the line, and nodding to Aeredh.
Like a gift the sky opened, shyly, slowly. I cannot say when I first noticed blue overhead, but streaks turned to stripes, the color widened, and finally bright sunshine turned the haze in the distance white. Though old, the snow was blinding, yet full of flittering shadows as the animals of the Taurain went about their daily business with little concern for our presence.
I felt as if I could truly breathe again, and the sensation was welcome even if the thing in my chest poke-prodded incessantly.
The horses picked up their pace, glad of the light as well. Arneior straightened, her mussed braids molten copper and the remains of her woad-stripe gleaming down the left side of her face, darker than the sky but just as blue save for the yellow fringes where the dye had worn loose. She glanced at me, and her smile was like that of a child whose long fever has broken. Even the breeze did not disconcert her, bringing a flush to her cheeks, her freckles glowing.
I did not think of how vulnerable we were upon this bright expanse, for it seemed one could see forever in any direction. I was simply, marvelously grateful; even the sudden appearance of steep-sided gullies after our short nooning halt, sneaking out of the snowglare like the Glass’s endless crevasses, did not sully the feeling.
Well past dark we took shelter in one of those cracks, called bailkah in the Old Tongue. After spring or autumn cloudbursts they are prone to floods so swift and foaming even an Elder may well be carried away upon the torrent, but in that season they provided shelter and the horses could find a manner of grazing along dry riverbeds, the snow easily brushed free with gentle hoof-scrapes. Not enough, certainly, but there was apparently still some fodder left.
When married to Elder seidhr even a mouthful might suffice as a full meal.
There was little brush to use as fuel; what could be found fed aelflame that night. The ground was cold, but every saddle-blanket and mantle was piled atop a huge clump of dead grass for Arn. I sat next to her couch and did not shiver; with the shadow-cloak drawn close, I could have been a stone for all the chill I felt.
I even managed to hum an old lullaby, one my mother had sung to all her children. No doubt my small one remembered it as well, for as soon as she closed her eyes she was gone into sleep’s arms. There is a limit to even a shieldmaid’s endurance.
So strange, to guard her slumber as she had so often mine. I watched the slight movement of her breathing safely inside her fabric nest, and the song found an answering thrum deep in my chest.
Minor and inconsequential, it was still the first seidhr I had attempted since the Jewel burned its way into me, and my eyes prickled with tears. I had not lost the weirding; I was still volva.
The difficulty lay in delicacy, for only a thin trickle of vital force was necessary. Yet a weight lay behind it, a vast dammed-up cauldron that could have been my own impatience, my longing to do something rather than be carried from one place to the next like baggage. A pair of Elder cities were burned and broken now, we had been chased to and fro through the Wild, and though we had won a river-race and survived our travels so far both victories seemed paltry indeed.
If Aeredh was correct and I had been chosen, what in sheepshit did the gods expect? I needed direction, yet dreams were taken from me and the concentration necessary to perform other divination robbed by the Elder thing burrowed into my flesh.
A wolf’s cry lifted in the distance. Karas, I thought, and rested my chin upon my knees, gazing at the fire. Another answered—most certainly Elak, though he was the most silent among them. Aeredh and Yedras had vanished as well. Only Daerith remained, the harpist moving about our small camp attending to what was needful before approaching, his step soundless and his dark hair bearing missing chunks, scorched bits trimmed away with more care than Eol or the Crownless had shown.
“My lady?” Tentatively, in the Old Tongue. He had rarely spoken to me, and even less so formally. “Is there aught you require? Something to drink, perhaps, or…?” His southron had improved immensely, though it still bore the accent of Nithraen.
I shook my head.
He folded down to sit on iron-hard earth brushed free of snow, glancing once at the lump of Arn’s couch. “The way will be easier now. There are Secondborn settlements between here and Dorael, and we will warn all we pass that the Enemy’s servants are riding. Though I would be surprised if they did not already know; they are not unwary here.”
Did he mean to comfort me? There was no solace to be found in my own thoughts, yet I wished he would leave me to them instead of altering his haughty Elder ways at this precise moment. Still, he had lent his great bow to Efain, and perhaps he was uncertain as well.
Or mayhap he was curious about the thing I carried. “It sounds almost as if you admire them.” My tone was polite, but only that. His disdain for mortals was not so marked as Yedras’s… and yet.
“You are the Allmother’s most favored children.” The shadows were kind to his face, leaching some of the essential alienness of Elder beauty. He could have been a man from south-over-sea, where they have strange ways but are still wholly mortal. “Even the Blessed say so, and they do not lie.”
“One of them does.” I did not turn my head, and in any case I could not look northward from the bottom of this ravine.
Yet I felt it. The darkness was like a sore tooth, tempting the tongue to circle, to pry. Distance did not seem to ameliorate the pull—no, in a strange fashion, it threatened to strengthen. Perhaps the Jewel did long for its siblings, trapped and suffocating in the Enemy’s iron crown.
The thought induced deep nausea, though there was naught but Elder liquid in my stomach.
“Yes,” Daerith agreed. “And we have fought him since before the first sunrise, Lady Solveig. We have lost, and lost again, and won at dreadful cost that is a loss in itself. Yet what can we do? The way home is barred; we are fading exiles. The Enemy will not cease until we are eradicated; your kind he wishes to rule, ours to erase.”
If the Elder could not fight him, what on earth could mortals do? “I thought at first that Aeredh wished me to use this thing in battle. Yet I cannot tell how.” I hugged my knees gingerly, listening to the cold, sibilant breeze over the bailkah’s top. There was nothing to halt the world’s breath on the Taurain; it wandered where it willed, a constant song like the breathing of a river.
Or the sea itself.
“My lord believes the Blessed themselves sent you.” Daerith’s ageless face was somber, and he seemed… uncomfortable, or as near to discomfort a graceful Elder could display. “And for my part I must believe so as well, for there is no other explanation. Yet we can only guess at the purpose. Certainly Faevril never unlocked any power in his greatest work, save their beauty and their sacredness. What you bear is holy; you must feel it.”
I feel nothing but discomfort, my lord Elder.“Yet if the Enemy acquires a Secondborn alkuine, he may find a way. That is what you Elder fear, is it not? I might be used against you, so you took me from my home and seek to keep me hidden like a brooch buried in a trunk. And after all I am only mortal; it will not be so long, as you Elder see it, before I am dead. The only wonder is that none of you have sought to hurry the event along.” My mouth stung, both with bitterness and with truth.
For I had thought long and hard about the Elder, even Naciel, while riding. And in my weariness I grew ill-tempered, the pain sawing at my innards near-unceasing and married to the fear breathing upon my back.
A cold wind from the North, indeed.
“Yes,” he said, quietly. “But I would not lower myself to strike at children.”
We regarded each other for a few moments. Daerith’s eyes were half-lidded, and finally he turned his gaze aside as if he could not bear to look upon me. Perhaps it was the fact of a mere Secondborn holding something so sacred to his people; I could not tell.
Finally, he spoke again. “What do you know of Lithielle, my lady alkuine?”
“A princess,” I hazarded. My time among Laeliquaende’s books and scrolls had not been spent delving for such lore, though what I had absorbed served me well enough during the river-race and in treating some small lichburn. “Aenarian Greycloak’s daughter, who fell in love with a Secondborn. They went to the Black Land and took a Jewel from the Enemy.” I hesitated. “We sing of a Bjornwulf in the south, but he was a king who fought monsters and died much-wounded upon a mountainside when all but his cupbearer deserted him. I do not think it the same man.”
“Indeed he was not. Lithielle’s love was a Northerner, son of a great but fallen House. Aenarian Greycloak refused to give his blessing to the match, and an Elder who loved the princess betrayed Bjornwulf to the Enemy—who did not kill him, instead keeping him chained as an amusement.” The harpist grimaced slightly, making a restless motion. “I do not think you have the patience to hear the tale sung; I am reducing the feast to but a single bone. Suffice to say Lithielle set out from Dorael wearing the very robe you do now. She braved the iron gates and the halls of the Enemy himself, and when her lover saw her in danger, he broke his chains. They took the Jewel you now carry from the great iron crown, and fled. Eventually they found refuge in Taeron’s lands, but by then her Secondborn husband was wounded and ailing. When he died she cast off both robe and Jewel, gifting them to Taeron, and herself chose mortal death.”
A princess with a glance like a knife.I had heard bits and pieces, of course, and a volva does not forget even partial sagas. I studied the harpist’s profile in uncertain blue-tinted firelight. “Some little of this I knew. Not all.”
“There is much more—Hjorin the Faithful, the Return to Dorael, the Vanishing. The greatest and most complete saga is in three parts and hardly ever sung even among us, for it was made by the one who betrayed Bjornwulf. He was my kinsman. My uncle, in fact; I bear his name, though they call me the Younger.” Daerith hunched, shoulders rising, almost as if he wished to make himself smaller. “He died of shame after singing his masterwork.”
“Ah.” I did not have an uncle—my father’s brother had gone to Hel’s country before I was born—but I could perhaps imagine the loss. What Daerith spoke of must have occurred long ago, and to bear the pain for so long… “I am sorry. You must grieve still.”
“Yes. We are not like you.” His right hand tightened, not quite curled into a fist. The motion was akin to Eol’s, but I would not have said so to this proud Elder. “A Secondborn may love again; your heart may eventually turn to another if the first does not accept you. We cannot. Once given, our… affections remain constant, even when we go into the Halls. Sometimes they consume us. Perhaps being able to do otherwise is another gift from the Allmother, since she loves your kind so well.”
“Do you really believe that?” I longed to know more of into the Halls, but it seemed rude to inquire too deeply upon. “We sicken, we die. Do not the Elder disdain us for it?”
“Some may. I think it more a blessing, for there is great weariness in a long life.” A short, flickering sideways glance. “Lithielle is the only Child of the Star granted a Secondborn death, for she would not be parted from Bjornwulf even then. The Blessed answered her, mayhap because she was the only being to give one of Faevril’s Jewels away.”
I took his words as a warning, and tried not to grimace. “Have no fear, my lord harpist. The instant I may do the same, I will with great haste.”
“Would you?” He stilled as the wind shifted direction, his head cocked.
“If you knew what it felt like, you would not ask.” If I held very still, the thing in my chest did not chew or burn too badly. “I do not want this. I long to be free of it.”
“And yet it shines in you, so brightly we almost cannot bear to look.” Daerith unfolded gracefully, catlike. “Were it not for Lithielle’s Shroud we might be blinded, and our pursuers drawn as to a lodestone.”
“What a lovely thought.” Perhaps the Jewel was simply hiding like a worm burrowed into a sheep’s guts, or the whip-infection in sickly fish. I could not even shudder, for it might poke at my innards—just how aware was the thing?
It seemed alive, in some quiet, questing way. But was it conscious?
The harpist now regarded me with a rueful smile, perhaps surprised or even amused at mortal sarcasm. He sobered quickly, though. “We may move with more swiftness now, and so may pursuit. Your shieldmaid is wise to rest while she may.”
Another thing I would do if I could.There was no point in saying as much, so I simply watched as he bent near a pile of gear to retrieve his bow. Then, armed and solemn, Daerith faded into the shadows on the other side of the fire. The horses slept standing, pressed together for warmth; Arneior’s breathing continued, soft as the sound of aelflame and the brushing of the wind.
Even wolves in the night were less lonely than one small volva huddled at the bottom of a ravine. And in the quiet, the pull against my subtle selves—and all the rest of me—sharpened.
It longed to draw me northward.
I did not have to climb the bailkah’s sides to look, for the view thrust itself upon my inner vision. Looming darkness upon the horizon, and the reddish glitters—fire in smoke, sparks refusing to fade.
It would be selfish to wake my small one because I was afraid; if I called into the darkness, perhaps one of the men would answer… but perhaps something else would, instead.
I could only sit, endure the burning in my chest, and wait for morning.