Lithielle’s Jewel
Thus was Lithielle granted a mortal death, singing as she clasped her lover’s body. Some say a great light flashed, others aver a deeper music answered, still others that a vast silence descended from the sky. All agree upon the vanishment, all agree that ever afterildora grew not only in Dorael but in other places. And a raven brought the news to the Greycloak’s throne…
—The Vanishing of Lithielle, attributed to Daerith the Elder
Arneior stared at the table as if she expected something venomous to appear and lunge for us. A thin, sweet unsound of seidhr blur-buzzed not just in the space near my ear but also behind my heart, the pulse thumping in my chest nowhere near as strong and sure as Aeredh’s. I waited, but nothing happened.
Finally, my shieldmaid turned her head slightly, to catch me in the edge of her sharp vision. “Well?” she said, softly.
Oh, please, Arn. Not you too.“Well, what?” I eyed the jug of springwine; perhaps another draught would settle me, or make the trembling in my limbs recede. “’Tis an exceeding small box, to be pursued by such great folk.”
A pathetic attempt at jesting, playing upon a secondary word for a woman’s most private parts, but it drew a pained laugh from us both nonetheless. My small one gave her spear a thoughtful quarter-turn, its blunt end digging into cold earth scraped bare of snow. These tents had no carpets, but they were far better than sleeping in the open.
I exhaled, breath shaken into small pieces by a shiver. Another awful silence rose like cold water, filling the tent to the brim—such quiet should have been comforting, because she was with me. Yet ’twas not, because I sensed what she was about to say, too.
It is a good thing to have a shieldmaid, but measuring one’s own actions against their uncompromising is not comfortable at all.
“Well?” she repeated.
“Arn…” My arms hurt, as if the bones inside them had not finished growing and were forced to do so quickly. My knees were sop-soft, and my back was unhappy in the extreme. Last night’s pure, untinctured terror still quivered all through me, like the casket’s steady feathery motion. How much more of this could I endure before I went utterly, gratefully mad?
There are stories of what happens when fear—or agony past mortal bearing—eats one possessing the seidhr. It is an unpretty end indeed.
“You wear the bands.” Oh, she was pitiless, my small one, for all she meant to render aid. “That thing is weirding, not something I can set my spear against. What are we to do with it?”
“Did you not hear what I said?” Frustration nipped at my throat, along with the dryness no Elder wine could erase. “It could kill me, Arneior.” Or worse. I could not tell what frightened me more, and that is dangerous.
I had wished for adventure, for great deeds. How many times had I chafed at my own limitations, even as Idra said, Large does not mean effective, the small has its place, try again?
“But you are volva.” Clearly Arneior did not credit such a fate for her charge. The tent’s walls rippled slightly as faint dawnbreeze mouthed them. “And why would the gods bring us here if you were not meant to wield it? That makes no sense.”
“We cannot go home.” The words were ash upon my tongue, like the flakes of burning still clinging to us both. If Naciel was ragged and Arn smeared with smoke-shavings, I was grateful I could not see what a sorry sight I myself presented at the moment. “The next time an Elder city falls some dread thing may well murder us both. If not, we shall be caught between Aeredh and Faevril’s sons, grain between millstones. Or that thing in the coffer, whatever it is, might not kill me but burn me to witlessness, leave me insensate as a beast. Can you imagine that, Arneior?” I did not think she could—none who lack weirding can compass the particular horror of that fate. “What say the Wingéd? Will they offer aid the next time we face a lich, or orukhar, or—”
“I have been afraid.” She half-turned, disregarding the table to face me, shoulders square and chin set as if we were about to spar upon a training-yard’s beaten-earth floor, a far more serious affair than the play of dodge-dancing we often engaged upon at home. “Since we left Dun Rithell, I can barely think for the fear. I was afraid when you were lost upon the Elder Roads, I was afraid during Nithraen’s fall, I was afraid when we faced the trul. I was deathly afraid when I could not find you last night, for you were not in our rooms and those foul things were already upon the riverbank. Then I was afraid again when the draugr screamed.” Her freckles stood out, and the ghost of her woad-stripe was bright against chalky paleness. “I am terrified, Solveig. But every time I look to you there is some comfort, for my wierdling is a volva. You know what to do; you will not fail here.”
Oh, gods.I depended on her certainty far more than my own clearly inadequate abilities, but how could I say so now? “You turned three of Naras’s wolves and a clodfoot drylander into a rowing team fit to win an Elder competition, Arn, and in less than a nineday. You faced a trul, you’ve killed half-a-dozen orukhar at once, and you rescued Naciel from… from him.” I found I could not say Maedroth’s name aloud either. My tongue simply refused. “If the Wingéd are not pleased it is no fault of yours, and I say so freely in their hearing.”
“So you trust me, but not my trust in you? For shame, my weirdling.” She did not smile, her generous mouth pulled tight. “I shattered an Elder’s brain-casing and cut off his head, and the thought does not sicken me as it should. I hardly know who I am, now.” Her spearblade scintillated in lanternlight, the merest hint of motion though she held herself stiffly upright. “You were meant for great things; I have always said so. At least look upon this bauble they wish you to wield.”
“I hardly know who I am, either.” It hurt to say, but there was also sharp relief like lancing an infection, drawing out the foulness so healing may begin. She had admitted her own fear, yet I still hesitated to bare the depths of mine. “I could not even turn Aeredh and Eol aside when they took us from Dun Rithell with a lie.”
“Perhaps you were not meant to,” she pointed out, reasonably enough. “And in any case it does not matter now, Sol.” A deep breath, Elder armor glittering with the movement. “I do not think we will ever see Tarnarya again. I have not since that first night in the fog.”
Oh, Arn.I took two steps, noiseless in my borrowed slippers, and found I could unclench at least my right hand. I touched her arm below the armor-sleeve, covered only with quilted fabric; flesh I had sealed, but the jagged slice from an orukhar’s blade could not be mended until I had some time with needle and thread.
Those were lost in Waterstone’s ruin, too.
The shadowmantle hid my own arm, even in the lantern’s glow. But the sleeve was pushed back and the lowest band upon my wrist showed, blueblack ink forced under the skin. My shieldmaid looked down at me.
There was no defense against the faith in her gaze, any more than against the sound of Aeredh’s heartbeat or Naciel’s entreaty.
For who had chosen to go to Laeliquaende, after all? Who had said, We are the allies of Naras, we will go where we are led? Who had entered the tower despite repeating her refusal, because the lure of something so powerful could not be denied to one such as I?
High time for truth, even if I would only admit it to myself. I was not really frightened of the thing in the iron box, and the lack of fear was disturbing in and of itself. What truly terrified Solveig of Dun Rithell was her own ambition, the yearning to be more—to have a saga, perhaps, to be thought wise and honorable… and then miscarrying the feat, becoming merely a jape, a cautionary tale, or worse, forgotten entirely.
The knowledge was bitter indeed. I swallowed it, for there was little other choice, and nodded. “We will not,” I agreed. “But at least we are together, and that is something.”
“Oh, aye.” Her spear moved again as she shifted, leaning into my touch. “Will it be enough, do you think?”
I do not know.“It has to be.” Despite the springwine, I was cold. There was no way to avoid what came next; all my struggle and striving had availed naught. “This is weirding, and you know what that means.”
“I shall make certain none touch you during the event.” Arneior nodded briskly, and the sudden easing of her expression was painful, for I could not share it. She patted my hand upon her arm, warm callused fingers. Then I had to let her go; she brushed past me to the tent-flap, standing guard no less than Tjorin outside. Perhaps Naciel had joined him, waiting for whatever would happen.
Yet she turned from the flap, and spoke again. “Sol?”
I looked to my shieldmaid, half hoping she had changed her mind. “Hm?”
“You sang, last night. In battle.” Arneior wore a small but definite smile, encouraging as my mother’s while teaching Astrid to walk. “You’ve never done that before.” And you have never done this, she meant, but look, there is hope.
I tried to smile in return, but my face was frozen. Instead, I turned to the table again, and pushed my sleeves—both dress and Elder shadowcloth—higher. My bands were plainly visible now, and I walked to my doom with them displayed.
A few moments’ worth of study, and I saw how the lid could slide wholly free. My hands were so cold; not even midsummer’s sun could have warmed me as I stood before that small table. Deep in the woods, in a tiny camp full of stunned, wounded Elder and exhausted warriors, in a small tent still smelling of the sweet herbs packed with its cloth… it was not a setting worthy of tale or saga.
In fact, ’twas rather threadbare, and the great epics never speak of the discomfort in one’s stomach from sheer terror, nor the clumsiness of mortal fingers. They do not speak of the clamor of battle or the fear which holds one frozen amid the blood and bowel-cut, nor of the silent weeping of children as they cling to any safety amid fire and rapine. I have sung many a saga before and since; they linger in the breath of all who have heard them, and music burrows into brains both mortal and Elder.
Even orukhar sing, after their own fashion, and thus, it is said, perhaps some distant day they will be free of their service to the Enemy and his dread lieutenants.
But no song tells of those things, and I wish at least one did. Yet who would listen to such laments? They do not grant courage, nor ambition, nor strength in the hour of need. All they might give is some compassion, and the world’s stores of that treasure oft seem slender indeed.
I rested my fingertips upon cold iron. Ash and travel-dirt clung to my nails, though the shadowmantle was pristine. Underneath it, sour sweat no doubt dyed the dress I had been gifted. Elder cloth will turn aside dirt and sometimes rain, but Secondborn flesh does not, and I was wholly mortal.
Arn faced the tent-flap, her spear easy in her grasp. She did not look back, even when the lid sprang aside almost of its own will, as if the thing underneath it yearned for freedom.
The songs say Faevril’s work was beautiful, but the word is pale beside what he achieved. Light poured from a bed of black Elder velvet, richer than silver and brighter than gold. Like sunshine it was, and moonglow, and yet unlike either, and also different from the fire of torches or the dry pure burning of stars. It could be said that it was not light at all, though the faceted jewel reflected every flicker of illumination that came its way, magnifying and hallowing even the smallest gleam.
No, not light. Perhaps clarity is a better word, or force. To name is to explain, but the term has not yet been found in any song save that of the very first Making itself.
To see a Jewel was to understand why the Allmother’s firstborn coveted such beauty, for the glow was tender and forgiving, radiating in every direction. To understand why the one who had wrought such things had guarded them jealously and sworn bitter vengeance when they were taken, yet also to understand why Bjornwulf had cast this shard of brilliance at the feet of Aenarian Greycloak, saying, Take your bride-price, king, for I value my wife more.
Of Aenarian’s scorn much is said elsewhere, and of Lithielle bending to pick up the ornament, casting one look at her father, and turning away even more is sung. She left the land of her birth directly afterward, to their long lamenting.
Of surpassing loveliness was Lithielle’s Jewel, and her gifting it to the king of a hidden valley where she and her lover finally found refuge was a great and powerful deed. So was Taeron’s binding it in a box only his daughter could open, for he had access to the tower—the temptation to return and view the treasure, over and over, would have been too much for even one of his will and wisdom.
It was warm, and its facets slick. It shone in the darkened tent, stinging my eyes to weep-blurring with hot heavy tears, and all the seidhr in me recognized the language it spoke. Before that moment, none could hear its voice save he who made it, and I glimpsed Faevril again as I had in Nithraen—a tall bright-eyed Elder, a streak of paleness amid his dark hair, his face alight as he finished a crowning masterwork.
For the Jewels were of no material mined or found even in the uttermost West, but made. The secret of his craft vibrated in them, plainly visible yet unable to be read by Elder, Secondborn, or even the gods themselves, for they are not alkuine.
To see how great one is compared to one’s fellows is a fine thing; men will do anything and women hardly less to feel that grace. Yet the one who could hear the Freed Jewel as she held it also saw how small, how insignificant she was next to that light, and though I cupped the radiance in my palms I would fain rather have done as Bjornwulf and cast it away. Anywhere, into the whirlpool under Waterstone’s Leap or the sea I had not yet seen with my physical eyes, into a mountain crevasse or the grinding ice of the Glass.
It was small, yes. But so heavy, and when it touched the hollow between my breasts, melting through cloth and finding my skin like a lover’s hand, I cried out from the agony.
I fell to my knees, and in my chest was a live coal. The burning pain, hovering just past the edge of pleasure like a sharp blade’s kiss, did not end.
It never will.