Chapter 19 #2
“Vigdis says you’re not allowed to keep your cups covered.
You must only block when the egg is coming.
If you block when there is no egg, you drink.
So, you must drink now. Eydis reminds Ivar you’re soten, so he can’t flick you, he must add to the doll.
Ivar chastises me for not telling you not to cover your cups because you’re a foreigner from the Land of Mud and Mist and high walls, so of course you would think to hide your cup. ”
“The doll?”
“Yes,” Dania grinned evilly and then turned to someone across the hall, shouting. They threw a cloth doll, which the man with the painted lids—Vigdis—caught and presented to her.
“It is our Fell doll. Look, he even has Fell’s tattoos. See?”
The doll was crudely made, but there were a few features that made it resemble Fell. Sort of. Tied to its clothing were little torn shreds of cloth.
“Every time someone wants to hit you and Fell isn’t here to be hit on your behalf, they tie a scrap to the doll to remind them when Fell comes back.”
“Surely I have not upset this many people,” I said. There had to be at least nine scraps tied to the doll.
“Look, look, Vigdis is adding now because you’re taking too long.”
“That’s cruel! I’m just learning the game.
I will drink.” And I did. I drank a big enough gulp that no one could accuse me of skimping.
And then I picked up the egg and tossed it, almost without thinking.
Vigdis caught it and returned it. I drank (because I had been nowhere near quick enough to stop it before it landed in my cup), and then I threw it toward the cup of the man who’d flicked me—Ivar—and that is how I began to play, in earnest, my first drinking game.
Both of my cups were empty in no time.
We played two more rounds.
Heat.
Aliveness.
A blurring of the world.
“Reedman!” I was shouting in the way drunken people shout, like the drink has covered our ears.
A man had entered the hall, and he was my favourite of the musicians in King Arik’s court.
He played an instrument that looked like a reed to me, perhaps a cattail.
So, in my thoughts, I called him Reedman.
Dania laughed so hard she nearly fell over. “What?”
“Reed-Man,” I said, over-enunciating each sound. “The man who plays the reed. Reedman.”
She shouted at him, and he came to our little group quickly. Like most Norsern, his head was shaved on the sides. His knuckles were blue with faded tattoos.
“I tell them your name for him. They say it is a grand name. It is what they will call him from now on.”
“Sole!” I said to him. “Sole… the one… it goes, ch-ch-ch-uhmmmm, chch-ah—” I threw my hands around as I made my request, raising my fingers high for high notes, low for the low ones. “Ch-ch-ch-uhmm-m—”
He understood. He hummed along with me.
“Yes!” I said, pointing at him, loving the sensation of being understood; it was so rare for me in those early days in King Arik’s court. “Sole, sole, sole! Please.”
“Ha! Soten—” And then he said a whole slew of things I didn’t understand.
I had no awareness of men in a romantic sense back then, but I do recall feeling a shift in the way he looked at me. I had singled him out and given him a name. I had noticed him, and this made him notice me.
Reedman played and then joined us in our games as people began to ask after my names for other Norsern I had met. I told them. They laughed drunkenly, enthusiastically.
“It is not so funny,” I said, leaning forward with exasperation, looking at everyone while I talked as if they could actually comprehend me. “You all have odd names for things, too. You call Jorn, ‘The Calm,’ is this not—”
Dania’s cheeks were red from drink. “Ouu. I tell them you do not know why Jorn is called this. They are all trying to tell the tale. And for each of them, it is a different story, but I am the only Islish speaker, so you will hear what I have heard. Haha! It was told to me that The Bard King had sought many soothsayers in the past. That he would love one’s readings but later find falsehood in them and rage at the readers.
He got rid of each soothsayer who gave false readings, including Vaeyra with the crystal in her skull—a very famous reader.
She had a crystal embedded into her forehead.
She held it there as her skin healed around it—that’s not important, just interesting, don’t you think?
“So many soothsayers were ruined or chose to forget their art for fear of the king’s rage that it became known that soothsayers were always worried…
But then! On a raiding journey, The Bard King found Jorn, and Jorn read for him calmly and was taken as soter.
Everyone waited for it to go wrong, and some even warned him that The Bard King would cut him apart one day soon, but Jorn stayed calm and kept reading.
It has been more than ten years and Jorn has not been slain. ”
I blinked. “That sounds like a made-up story.” Especially the part with the crystal in the skull, I thought.
“Ah, it probably is,” Dania said. “But Jorn is a very calming soul, is he not?”
Reedman gave me a full goblet and held up the egg-ball with a grin. Another game commenced.
The mead had become, without my knowledge or invitation, a tunnel for me.
There was Mira the Goldkeeper, rigid, according to prescription, mild.
And then there was Mira, the accidentally drunk.
I didn’t know that parts of me had come to the surface because I had the excuse of being drunk.
I didn’t pay such good attention to things like that back then.
I only knew that I wanted more.
I drank, and it was as if I’d been wearing a second goldkeeper’s gown all my life and finally took it off.
Dania pulled me up, and we jumped around, sloppily piecing together Islish dance routines which did not pair at all with the Norsern music.
We laughed and hopped and flitted and held hands and took turns spinning each other in circles.
I fell many times and none of the falls hurt.
And then the song changed—a rumbling, growling, heavy tune.
Deep voices joined in, and Reedman played.
The twanging, groaning, pulling sound and the build of the drums faster and faster…
I felt it in my blood. My limbs translated that feeling.
I swayed and twisted my wrists above my head.
I rolled my neck and closed my eyes, feeling, feeling, feeling.
Drowning in sensation. The rush of music on my skin.
Foreverness.
Fearlessness.
“There,” Dania whispered to me when the music finally slowed in the early hours of the morning, and we collapsed onto furs to rest our legs. She held my head gingerly, stroking my hair. “There, see? You have tasted being Norsern and no bad has come from it.”
I cried silent tears as I pressed my cheek into her shoulder. “I am a void. There is nothing inside of me.”
“No.” Her voice became firm. “You are drunk. You will be embarrassed to have cried in a few hours. Also, you’re due to meet with The Bard King shortly.”
“What?” I sat up suddenly.
“It is morning. He will have risen already.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?”
“I figured the light coming through the windows would have told your eyes, and your eyes would have told you.”
“I must refresh…” I took a swaying step toward the door and then stopped, worried I was to retch.
“You must eat and move slow. Mead mornings require no sudden movements or loud sounds.”
“Good morning. Have you been waiting?” I rushed into King Arik’s study to find him standing over his tall table, examining a piece of linen. The window was open—as he liked it—a frigid breeze coasting into the room.
I’d furiously combed my hair and splashed my face with water before making my way to him, but I didn’t feel at all recovered or presentable.
“Ha! You have had a good evening, Gentlewoman.”
“It was… fair.” The world swam around me.
“Sit. Sit. Eat something. Drink.”
The toasted cranberry bread he pushed across the table looked revolting. The mead he pushed forward after that left me worried I would vomit.
The king used his stern voice. “I can assure you. It will ease you.”
I took the plate and goblet and sat in the chair near the window.
It was far enough away that I could still see him clearly despite the height of his table.
I set the goblet on the windowsill, hoping to forget about mead entirely, and picked at the bread, finding a thread of respite in how cold the room was.
“I heard you created names for many in my court?”
“Word travels fast,” I said.
“It does. That is good to remember, Gentlewoman. This is not exclusive to my court. Everyone wants to be the first person to tell a king the news. It is the same for a commander. A captain. And people are especially prone to talking about you since your visit to the land.” Though he was talking to me, he kept his eyes on the linen he was observing, his brows furrowing and then unfurrowing as the breeze tugged at his tunic.
“Hallbjern—the man who attended you and Jorn to shore—he said the wind came to meet you. He is not known for being particularly spiritual, so people are listening.”
I could recall the rush of wind when we’d stepped onto the beach, but there had been nothing… unusual about it.
Finally, he looked up. “Did you have one for me?”
My head throbbed. “One what?”
“A created name.” His eyes shone with daring.
The leftover mead in my stomach must have made me a little daring too. “You will like it too much. I almost shouldn’t tell you.”
He raised his brows.
“Shrewdmind.”
“Ha! You are right. I love it. I will have to wrestle with Hallbjern this afternoon to humble myself.”
I managed a larger piece of bread and found that once I swallowed, I did feel better.
The king’s gaze wandered back to the linen. “Gentlewoman, would you come look at this for me?”
I stood, with no joy at all to be moving, and came around to his side of the table, which was something I hadn’t done before. The linen was actually a tapestry. The sea rose up in the middle, with one big wave arching into a swirl. Trees filled with fruit hung over the sea from each side.
“What do you think of this?”
“The stitching is fair,” I said.
“But the image. What does it bring into your mind?”
“Well…” I tilted my head a little to the side. “It seems like there is no story at all, like the maker was trying not to say anything.”
“It does, does it not?”
I looked up at him—he wasn’t as tall as most Norsern, but he was still taller than I was.
He had a rare quality about him. He was whatever age he was—his fair hair was streaked with grey, and he had lines around his eyes—but he also had so much energy within that he felt young.
He felt the way lightning did when you were trying to catch it: endless, too much to be contained, but enough to fuel anything you could think of.
“Jorn said the same thing,” he said. “The craftswoman was hiding her thoughts from me.”
I felt my face go empty—I wasn’t sure what he wanted from me, so I became nothing. Nothing has less chance of making an error than something. But perhaps I also sensed a little of what was coming next.
“I have a request, Gentlewoman.”
“Of course,” I said.
“I would have you learn about reading stones. I enjoy fresh perspectives.”
“I…” My mind was still washed with mead. I needed an excuse… “I think I would do it poorly.”
“I think you would do it exceptionally. Jorn thinks so, too. You read this tapestry without any training. Indeed, likely with the opposite of training. Your gifts have been quelled is Jorn’s suspicion.”
My heart thumped uncomfortably in my chest.
“I do not like ordering people to do things they do not wish to do unless strictly necessary. So I am asking, Gentlewoman. But asking with great hope. I theorize this is why you have ended up on my shores. I find myself wondering if you are meant to read for me.”
I heard what he wasn’t saying. He wanted to keep me in Aalt until I’d read for him.
I thought of Loric’s gold, hidden safely for the time being. It was my job to get it back home. That was my purpose.
“And if I can’t… manage it?”
“Then I am mistaken, and it is something else you are here for. I have been wrong many times before.” His eyes disagreed with his words; his expression said he was certain.
The feeling of standing next to him became the feeling of standing with my skin against steel—something was going to split first, and we both knew which something.
“I’ll try, your Grace, but I don’t expect much…”
“Ha! This is your first reading lesson, then. Your opening words shape the reading. Your stance. Your breath. Every aspect of you and every aspect of those listening calls forth truth—but specific truths. This is the trick of truth, you see? It has as many sides to it as there are people and gods and spirits and creatures.”
My gaze shifted to the eye totem he wore around his neck. The truth worshipping totem.
The king stepped away to pluck a leather pouch off one of the driftwood shelves behind him. He plopped it on the table in front of me. Did it slide with the slightest unnaturalness? Or was I imagining that?
“I have had these made for you. Take them to your least favourite place in the palace and sit with them. Lay them out. Feel them. I would like you to develop a relationship with them before you learn the runes and their meanings.”
I set my fingers on the pouch, hating it, but also determined to make quick work of it for the sake of Loric’s gold.
I first thought to take the stones to the place where Erland had died, but that place had been softened by his funeral and all that had come after.
Besides, it was open to the sky, and it was far too cold for me to enjoy being out of doors.
I went instead to the gilded door—the one I was forbidden to enter.
If given the vault’s sting, it would make a perfect protective surface.
For this reason, it annoyed me—mildly taunted me is perhaps a better way to say it.
But it was also a part of the palace that was always empty.
The Norsern avoided that hall and that door.
I wanted to be alone with my task.