Chapter 49 #2
“Use these.” Arik tossed a sack across the table, and it landed with a plop in front of me. The bag was made of orange felt. It was familiar to me…
I set my lyre down on the table and picked up the pouch, my mind scrambling to place where I’d seen it before.
They’re Jorn’s, I realized. The king had given me Jorn’s casting stones.
Beware, they said from within their little pouch. Beware.
My fingers threatened to shake as I loosened the leather drawstring. Tell me quickly, I thought at the stones. Where is Jorn?
I slid my fingers into the bag and pulled out a single stone. Birth. That was also the stone for death.
I looked up at Arik. He seemed his normal self, enthusiastic, picking apart an idea in his mind. Surely, he would be bothered if Jorn were dead.
“What question do you have?” I said.
“Ah, first I would ask about the man you were betrothed to, Grainkeeper Loric.”
Grainkeeper, I thought. Rowan had told me he inherited his father’s kepen since I’d seen him last. Someone must have told King Arik as well. “What about him?”
“Do you think, if he were to discover you were with me, he would agree to meet and talk? How do you think he would respond?”
“He hardly knew me—”
“Ask the stones,” Arik said.
So I did. I meant to scatter only one, but three came out.
I raised my brows in genuine surprise. “They say he would… offer to pay you for my release.” They also said he would hold back his forces, but I didn’t believe that part for a moment, so I didn’t say it.
A grainkeeper’s most important role was ensuring the defence of their fields.
The order wouldn’t approve of him holding back his knights.
“You doubt the stones?”
“I… I do not really know him. I only met him the one time. It feels a generous response for how little we spoke.”
“Regardless, it is good to know,” Arik said. “Now, your brother—”
My heart slammed into my chest. “I cannot go back,” I said, suddenly terrified that this was King Arik’s intention. He had said moons ago he’d thought to exchanging me for trade deals. “They would kill me for what I have done here. Halvar could not—”
“I am merely trying to understand his character. If he came to know you were with me, what would your brother do?”
“I…”
“Ask the stones,” Arik said again.
I reached my hand into the pouch and pulled out a stone. “Unclear,” I said, turning it around in my fingers.
Arik frowned. “What do you mean, unclear?”
I frowned. “I think he does not know what he would do, so the stones cannot know.”
“Interesting.” Arik stood quietly for many moments, stroking his beard.
“Very well.” He set both of his hands on the table and stared straight at me.
“This question will be harder for you, but I want you to do your best. Use the stones if you must, but you might not need to. I will be here the whole time. You need not rush in your answer.”
I nodded.
His bright wolfish eyes locked onto mine. “What is trapped in the vaults?”
My face went cold. “What?”
“The vaults in your home country. They are of a particular build, no? I have seen treasuries ransacked… temples… it is more than gold housed within.”
My mouth had gone completely dry. “I cannot speak of them—”
“Ah, but I already know a fair bit. I have been near one. Many years ago, the very kepen you were meant to guard after your wedding, the Hard-Won Kepen. I heard a strange voice from within. Clear as the sun on a cloudless day. It asked to be let out. What is it?”
The hair on my arms raised. I shook my head.
“Gentlewoman, they have frightened you for years, I know. But you are safe from them here. Tell me, what lives in the vaults?”
I remembered the voice from within the vaults. The way Elfrith’s hands had swollen up after they were whipped with stinging nettle for mentioning it. The leeches…
“Gentlewoman. Focus.”
My feet felt like lead. We do not mention it…
“You know of what I speak. Something lives inside the vaults. Something that wants out.” He snapped his fingers twice, trying to shake me out of my cold terror.
“I know you went into the room I had forbidden you.”
My entire being stilled, but I think the words were effective in the way he meant them to be, because my cheeks heated and for a moment, my mind worked a little.
“What…”
“Jorn told me. It was how I knew you were to become a soothsayer for me. Those who see it and attempt to flee my company in fear—they are the false readers, the ones who doubt their ability, or the ones who have been dishonest in their readings to me.”
I shook my head. “But Jorn—”
“Gentlewoman, let us focus. I am sorry to have brought up something that disturbs you so, but it cannot be delayed any longer. Now is the time to act. There are nineteen vaults in the Land of Mud and Mist. They are of similar build based on all the accounts I have been able to find. What unlocks one should unlock another. So, Gentlewoman, here is what we will do.” His voice was as sturdy as stone, each word a promise.
“You will accompany me to your home country. And you will open the vaults for me, one by one—”
My stomach turned to ice. “You do not understand what you are—”
“I understand entirely. This could be difficult for you, but I will make it easy. Halvar will stay with those I trust. He will not be harmed—you know I love him. I could not allow harm to come to him. But you will not see him again until I have seen the inside of a vault.”
Bile threatened to rise in my throat because I knew… I knew Arik wouldn’t say such a thing unless… “Where is he?”
“He is fine, Gentlewoman. Flojer has handed him over to my charge—”
Something curdled inside me, and I took a step back, trembling.
I whined. “No. No. I must see him now.” I wiped at my forehead.
Ice-cold hands touching skin as hot as fire.
“I cannot help you unless I see him.” It was where Ivar and Eydis had gone, I knew it.
Flojer had asked to keep Halvar aboard. He’d known…
“Gentlewoman, calm. Do you not trust that I will do as I say? That I will keep you safe while we are away? That Halvar will—”
There was a groan and a choke just outside the tent. A hefty thump. A grimace-sound from a voice I knew well…
My heart stopped.
The world grew slow, like in a dream.
Blood rushed into my ears, drowning out all sound except the thudding of my heart.
Thump.
Silence.
Thump.
Silence.
I turned my head in time to see King Arik draw his sword. I saw each detail—each increment of the whole movement. A man burst into the tent.
Fell.
Blood-soaked.
Eyes all rage.
Animal and grotesque and entirely unlike himself.
Ugly.
How much it confused my mind to see him seem so ugly.
Thump.
Fell pointed his blood-slick axe at Arik, screaming something I couldn’t decipher in the slowness.
Silence.
Arik shouted something back, tossing his sword to the ground, refusing to fight.
Thump.
A hand pulled on my wrist. I looked over to find Yarlav. Flojer’s son?
Silence.
Yarlav tugged me away, out the tent flap to the bright, white beach. The sun blazed into my skull, blinding me for a moment.
“No!” I shouted, but my voice didn’t come—or maybe it did, only my ears couldn’t hear it?
I tugged my arm back. “Fell!” I cried. “Go get Halvar!”
Yarlav’s mouth moved, and I knew he was yelling something at me, but I couldn’t understand it. I jerked my arm back, trying to get away. He’s taken Halvar away from me. I had to get to Halvar.
Yarlav made my attempts at resistance seem pitiful.
His arm strained, and his fingers dug into my wrist as he ran, dragging me behind him, over Halbjern’s body—his skull smashed against the rock he had been leaning on.
My legs caught beneath us, and I tumbled, taking Yarlav down with me because he wouldn’t let go.
We skidded on the rocks, my face scraping against scalding stone.
Another beat.
I screamed and bit Yarlav’s hand as he dragged me back to my feet. “He has my son!” And then, “I cannot leave without him! We have to wait for Fell!”
Yarlav didn’t stop, didn’t even turn back to make it easier for me to hear his words over the din that I was only beginning to comprehend. “He is with us!”
I strained my neck, and sure enough, Fell was behind us. Several of King Arik’s raiders gaining speed behind him. Where had they come from?
“Arik has Halvar!” I tugged with all my might, and Yarlav changed his hold, my elbow twisting the wrong way unless I kept pace with him.
I moved my legs as quickly as I could, but each step still felt like I was on the brink of falling, on the brink of my elbow breaking because no step was wide enough to keep up with Yarlav’s long stride.
Onto the dock, leaping over bodies—some I did not know, others I knew well: Rowan, his insides spread outside, his face gone, I knew him by the stains on his hands. Fara—even dead, she looked beautiful.
A croak came out of my throat as the wood groaned beneath us.
Yarlav pushed me into a docked rowboat, my chin slamming on the bench, the sound of the world coming back in full force, everything suddenly happening too fast for me to comprehend.
Yarlav had managed to untie the boat by the time I righted myself, my heart pumping, the world so loud it hurt.
Yarlav pushed off and was in the boat himself, scrambling over me to grab the oars, just as Fell caught up, crashing through the water and gripping the boat’s edge, pushing as the waves tried to keep us docked.
He still looked deranged to me, not at all like himself as he screamed at Yarlav, “ROW!”
Several raiders were charging into the sea, their approach slowed by the water, but only just.
Fell turned his head as he pushed, looking behind him once before returning his gaze to me.
His eyes widened.
The corners of his mouth twitched in a way that let me know he knew something I didn’t.
And then the brazen fool pushed once more, letting go of the boat and turning with his axe raised.
“CAST!” Yarlav shouted from behind me. “CAST FOR HIM!”