Chapter 21
The Jarl's Chamber
Thorfinn's private chamber sat at the far end of his hall, behind a heavy oak door and two guardsmen.
"Sit," he said. "All of ye."
Torstein took the chair beside Samira. Leif, Mathias and Njal settled along the bench opposite. Thorfinn remained standing by the hearth with his arms folded.
"When Abbess Murdina came to me," he said, "she told me only that a package waited in Fez and that the Brotherhood would kill to have it. I sent ye to fetch it. Now tell me what it cost."
Torstein told it plainly.
"They were in Fez before us. They set upon Samira in the souk, then poisoned her cup in her father's own house.
They paid bandits to ambush us on the road to Salé.
" His jaw tightened. "Then at Thurso, men paid by a Norman churchman tried to drag her off the shore at dawn.
They were told she was a thrall who would not be missed. "
"The Brotherhood." Thorfinn's eyes narrowed. "At Thurso. That is too close to my own shore." He turned to Samira. "And that is why ye were wed again there."
"Yes, Jarl."
He nodded once, as though that settled it, and went to a chest by the wall.
"There is one more thing," Torstein said. "A day short of Salé we crossed paths with your son."
Thorfinn's head came up. "Kato?"
"Aye. He and Ajani rode down on the men who set upon us, and between us we cleared the road.
" Torstein allowed himself a grin. "He sends his greetings to you, and to his sister and her bairns.
He bade me tell you he is alive and that he has found something worth following.
He is hunting rebels along the coast, well paid ones, and he means to find who is paying them. "
For a moment the jarl said nothing at all.
He turned toward the fire, and the hard lines of his face changed in a way Samira had not thought them capable of changing. There was a longing in it, and beneath that, plain as day, a father's pride.
"Rebels," Thorfinn said at last. "At his age I was doing the same, and with half his sense." He cleared his throat. "Did he look well?"
"He looked like a man who has not slept in a month and is enjoying himself immensely."
Thorfinn laughed once, low in his chest. "Aye. That is my son."
He stood a moment longer with his back to the room. Then he squared his shoulders and turned around, and the Jarl of Orkney was in his place again.
"Well," he said. "To the matter at hand."
The pendant lay on a fold of dark cloth. Blue-green stone, set in old gold.
"I have looked at it half the night," Thorfinn said. "It is a pretty thing. But I cannae see why men would cross the world for it."
"May I?" Samira asked.
He gestured for her to take it.
She lifted the pendant from the box and hung it about her neck. The moment it settled against her breastbone, the stone began to glow. A soft light, the color of shallow water.
Njal sucked in a breath. Leif sat forward.
"My mother's kin have guarded this stone for generations," Samira said. "It passed from mother to daughter. My mother hid it before she died, and my father told me where to find it only this year, where she left it for me."
"And ye brought it away," Thorfinn said.
"It was no longer safe where it was. There is a prophecy among my mother's people. That when the men of the cross came hunting it, the guardian must carry it north across the sea to those who would keep it safe." She glanced at Torstein.
"Then what is it?" Thorfinn asked. "What does it do?"
"It reveals what is hidden. And it can find other relics. Those with the same power in them, cut from the same stone or marked by the same hand." She rested her fingers on it. "But only in the hands of a guardian. Only in the hands of my blood."
As she spoke, a second light woke in the room.
Every head turned toward the shelf. Among the objects there sat a rough gray stone no bigger than a fist, and deep within it the same blue-green light had begun to pulse.
Thorfinn went very still.
Samira rose and crossed to the shelf. She did not touch the stone. She only looked at it, her hand resting on the pendant.
"This is a protection stone," she said. "It was cut from the same stone as the pendant."
"Truly?" The jarl came to stand beside her. "It was dug up from beneath the foundations of this fort. A seer told me it was a ward against evil, and I kept it for that. I never knew what it was."
"She was right. It guards this hold. It has always guarded it." She looked back at him. "But it is not the only one. There are others, spread across many holds."
"What else do ye see?"
Samira closed her fingers around the pendant and shut her eyes.
Torstein moved without thinking and set his hand over hers where it held the stone. She did not open her eyes. But some of the tautness went out of her shoulders, and her breathing settled.
The room was silent. Torstein watched her face and saw the frown gather between her brows.
"There is another," she said slowly. "An amulet. A truth seeker. It sits in a castle." She tilted her head, as if listening. "The castle of a king. A great hall of stone, with a river below it."
Thorfinn and Torstein exchanged a look.
"Macbeth's Castle," Thorfinn said quietly.
"Like this pendant," Samira went on, "it needs a chosen woman to unlock it. It will not wake for anyone else."
She touched the pendant again. Her frown deepened.
"There is also a rune. Not far from here. Carved on stone inside a mound of earth. It bears the same design as this." She pressed her palm flat against the pendant. "Its power is dormant. Waiting. But not for now. It is not time."
"Orkahaugr," Thorfinn said, and his voice had gone rough. "I told the Abbess the design was familiar the day she showed me her sketch. I did not want it to be true."
"Anything more?" Torstein asked.
Samira was quiet a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was lower, and there was something wary in it.
"Yes. Another. It is a rune, but it is also a dagger. A relic." Her fingers tightened on the pendant. "There is a curse bound to it. I can feel it." She hesitated, and a name seemed to come to her from somewhere outside herself. "Kilmarnock. In the south. Near Ayr."
She opened her eyes and let go of the pendant. The glow in it softened, and on the shelf the gray stone dimmed to nothing.
She swayed once, and found her husband's hand still wrapped around her own. Whatever the seeing had drawn out of her, his grip seemed to give back.
"That is all I can see for now," she said.
For a moment nobody spoke.
Njal crossed himself. Mathias muttered something under his breath.
"Do ye understand what this means?" Thorfinn said at last. He looked around at all of them. "This does not simply guard a secret. It finds them. Every relic with power hidden in it. If the Brotherhood held this, they could hunt down the lot."
"They could not," Samira said quietly. "Not without me. In any other hands it is only a stone."
Thorfinn looked at her. Then he let out a long breath.
"Then it is not only the pendant they will hunt," he said. "It is you."
Torstein's hand found Samira's beneath the table and held it hard.
***
THORFINN PACED THE length of the hearth twice before he spoke again.
"Macbeth and I are bound for Rome soon," he said.
"We will be gone many months. I cannae keep this here while I am away, and I will not risk it on the road to Rome.
" He turned to face them. "The Abbess gave me this task, and it is not finished.
The pendant must go back to Saddell Abbey.
Murdina and her sisters will keep it safe. "
"And Samira?" Torstein asked.
"She goes with it." Thorfinn's gaze moved to her. "The stone is useless without its guardian, and its guardian is not safe anywhere the Brotherhood can reach her. Ye will all go with extra guards."
Torstein looked at his wife.
Samira gave the smallest nod. This was her destiny and why she had gotten on the ship.
"Consider it done, Jarl," Torstein said.
Thorfinn's hard face creased into something close to a smile. "I expected nothing less."
"When?" Samira asked.
"Ye have only just come home. Enjoy the feast tonight. Take a few days in yer own house." He placed the pendant back in the boist and locked it away. "Three days after the feast, ye make the journey to Saddell."
"Three days," Torstein agreed.
Beyond the oak door the hall was already filling with voices and the smell of roasting meat. Ingibiorg's feast was waiting.
Samira rose with her husband's hand still in hers and felt the weight of what lay ahead settle over her. Three days of home. Then the road south, and whatever waited at the end of it.
***
First Fight
THORFINN'S SHIP CARRIED them across the Pentland Firth, and from there they took horses.
It had been the jarl's decision. The Brotherhood had hired men in Dyflin, and they would be watching the western sea lanes for a Norse sail.
A small band of riders on the roads would draw far less notice.
So they went south through Sutherland and Ross, Torstein and Samira, Leif, Mathias and Njal.
Torstein carried the pendant in its box against his chest inside his tunic, and he slept with his hand on it.
They followed the Great Glen past the long black water of Loch Ness, then Loch Linnhe, then south into Argyll. Samira had never seen so much water that was not the sea, or so many trees. She rode with her face turned up to the rain and did not complain once.
On the ninth day, on the shore of Loch Awe, the birthmark on her wrist began to burn.
She reined in. "We are followed."
Torstein looked back along the empty road. "I see nothing."
"Give me the pendant."
He hesitated, and she saw it. Then he handed it to her.
She closed her fingers around it and shut her eyes.
The light came at once, stronger than it had ever come in Thorfinn's chamber. She saw riders two days behind them, cloaked, moving fast. She saw a ship in a gray harbor. She saw something else beyond that, something that pulled at her, deep and cold and it would not let her go.
"Samira?"
She could not answer him. The pull grew stronger.
"Samira!" Torstein shouted.
The stone was torn from her hand. She came back to herself on her knees in the wet grass with Torstein holding her up, and there was blood running from her nose over her lips and down her chin. She tried to speak and the world went dark.
When she woke it was nearly dusk. She was wrapped in every cloak they had, lying by a fire, and Torstein was sitting beside her with a fearful expression on his face.
"Riders," she whispered. "Two days behind us."
"I know. You said it before you fell." He did not take his eyes off her. "You were gone an hour, Samira. You were cold as the loch. I could not wake you."
"I am awake now."
Torstein said nothing. But she saw him put the pendant box back inside his tunic, and she saw his hand stay on it.
***
Loch Fyne, Argyll
THEY CAMPED THE NEXT night at the head of Loch Fyne, in a stand of birch above the water. Mathias built the fire. Njal took the first watch. Leif took one look at Torstein's face and found a reason to see to the horses.
Samira sat by the fire and waited. She had known since Loch Awe that this was coming.
"When we reach Saddell," Torstein said, "I will give the pendant to the Abbess. Her sisters can seal it away somewhere no one will ever find it. Then you and I return home. From this day forward, you will have nothing more to do with it!"
"The jarl said I must remain at the abbey with it."
"I will speak to the jarl."
"And the other relics? The dagger at Kilmarnock? The stone in the mound?"
"Let them sleep. They have slept this long."
"The Brotherhood will not let them sleep." Samira kept her voice level. "You heard Thorfinn. The pendant finds them. If it is sealed away, it is only a stone in a box waiting for someone to come and find the key. And the key is me."
"Then the key stays in Orkney. Behind my walls, with my men on the gate."
"As it stayed behind my father's walls?" Her voice rose. "Behind the walls of al-Qarawiyyin? It did not keep the Brotherhood from my door."
"It bled you!" He was on his feet. "You fell on the ground bleeding and I could not wake you. That stone is harming you and you want to hunt for more of them!"
"It is what I was born for!"
"And it sent your mother to her grave!"
The words hung in the air between them.
Samira stared up at him. He saw her flinch as if he had struck her, and he knew he had gone too far, and he could not make himself take it back, because he was too afraid.
"I did not cross an ocean," he said, more quietly, "to bury you for your mother's cause."
"It is not her cause. It is mine." She rose slowly to face him. "I am asking you not to make decisions for me. I need you to trust me and ask me."
"I am your husband." His voice was hoarse. "And on this I will not ask."
Somewhere down by the horses, Leif had gone very quiet.
Samira looked at Torstein for a long time. Then she nodded, once, and turned and went into the tent without another word.
Torstein walked down to the shore in the dark and stood there with his fists clenched until the cold drove the worst of the anger out of him. He told himself he would speak to her in the morning. He told himself she would see sense.
He did not see her slip out of the tent an hour later, while Mathias dozed at the fire and Njal walked the far side of the camp.
He did not see her take the boist from the pack where he had set it down to wash.
He did not see her stop, and turn back, and lay a folded scrap of vellum on his furs before she left.
***