Chapter Seventeen Elvine #2
“It was the red-faces that did that. Punishment for all those stones my idiot neighbours threw, I’d guess.
I could tell the queen wasn’t happy about it.
Even said sorry. Wasn’t sorry enough to leave any of the fish they stole, though.
” Thunna paused, settling a steady gaze on Elvine.
“But she did leave a message for this one. Described her right well too, down to that there mole at the corner of her mouth. You her friend, then, girl?”
“No.” Recognising her tone as harsher than it should be, Elvine forced a smile. “I was compelled to her service for a time. That’s all.”
Doubt showed in the woman’s eyes but she said no more, instead going to retrieve an earthenware jar from a shelf.
Opening it, she extracted a scrolled piece of parchment and set it down on the table before Elvine.
“Not sure why I didn’t burn the fucking thing,” Thunna said.
“But she seemed so earnest about it. Thought she was going to cry when she made me promise to put it in your hands.”
“Mummery.” Gruinskard sniffed. “Trying to portray herself as weak.”
“Why would she do that?” Kahlvik wondered.
“Some deceitful stratagem or other. I’ve little doubt we’ll discover its nature before long.” Gruinskard lifted his bowl to his lips and drained the remaining stew. “Aren’t you going to read it?” he asked Elvine, using his metal hand to wipe the droplets from his beard.
Unfurling the scroll, Elvine was surprised to find the inscription rendered in ancient Ascarlian runic rather than Aryptic hieroglyphs. The message was also un-cyphered and brief: I forgive you, Elvine. For Vahlak, and so much else. Can you not do the same for me?
“Well?” Gruinskard prompted when Elvine rose from the table with the parchment in hand. “Anything of use?”
“No,” she said. Moving to Thunna’s fireplace, Elvine tossed the parchment onto the burning peat, watching it shrivel and blacken into smoke. “Mere taunts of no value or interest.”
The fine weather broke a day after they sailed away from Sehlum Hardta, the breeze becoming a gale and the blue of the sky vanished behind a thick covering of grey-black cloud.
Snow began to fall that night, adding another chore to their labours as it piled up on the deck.
The storm lacked the savage fury of the monster that had assailed them during the voyage from Olversahl, but it lasted longer, compounding the misery of all those aboard.
Elvine’s days were spent helping shovel snow over the side and scraping away yet more ice.
Her nights became an even greater trial as sleep grew elusive and she found herself spending the lost hours communing with the spirit in the spear.
Did you burn her message because you believed it a lie? she asked Elvine during the third night of the storm. Or because you knew it to be true, and it angered you?
“Lore has no right to beg forgiveness,” Elvine murmured back. Her tone was heated but she kept it low for fear of waking Colvyn. His suspicion of the spear had only grown with time and she could sense his deep discomfort whenever she conversed with its inhabitant.
And so your kind assails me anew with its strangeness. Was forgiveness not a cherished aspect of the faith you followed? And now you shun it.
“The Covenant holds forgiveness as divine,” Elvine conceded. “But it must be heartfelt. Genuine. Else it is a lie and an affront to the Martyrs’ example.” She breathed out a mirthless laugh. “Or so I once believed.”
And now?
“Now I realise there is so much of this world, with all its complexities and contradictions, that lies beyond the reach of creeds and dogmas. Set against all I have witnessed they seem… pitiful. Fumbling attempts to grasp the ungraspable.”
Or brave attempts to sink anchors of faith into an ocean of chaos. Every argument has its counter, child.
Not for the first time, Elvine found herself driven to ask questions she knew would receive no answer. “What are you? If you are not a god, how do you know so much? What was the nature of your existence before you became trapped in this prison of iron?”
She expected more cryptic obscurity, but this time she sensed a kernel of truth in the spirit’s response.
In any way that matters, my existence began with my imprisonment.
I am a remnant of something diminished by transformation.
But I am not denied the memories of what I was.
Sometimes, the weight of them is crushing.
“Can you share them? I would know from whence you came.”
And know it you will. For I believe I now understand where your prey is leading us.
“Where?” Elvine gripped the spear tight. But, as was often the case when her demands for knowledge became too strident, the spirit within had fallen silent.
Another two days sailing at last brought an end to the storm, the curtains of snow parting to reveal a veritable maze of fjords and inlets.
Kahlvik dubbed the region the Snarls, pronouncing it the limit of his previous northbound adventures.
He ordered the Ohlnir and the Chainbreaker to anchor in a shallow inlet while their crews cleared away their shrouds of ice and snow.
“From here on the waters are nigh unnavigable, Spear Maiden,” he advised Elvine. “The currents are fierce and the water rich in hidden reefs. Also, when last I sailed here it was high summer. The fjords ahead are likely to be rich in bergs.”
“And yet our quarry has sailed on undaunted,” she pointed out.
“An act I can ascribe only to madness or some arcane foresight we are denied.”
“Not foresight, Vellihr, but a map,” Elvine corrected.
Turning to the prow, she frowned at the matrix of narrow channels and tall peaks ahead.
“The Map of Veils to be exact.” And we lack our own copy, she added inwardly.
It was clear Kahlvik considered their mission a failure and was on the cusp of suggesting a return to Skar Magnol.
Elvine’s instinct was to refuse, but without a means of plotting a course she could be dooming the crews of two ships.
As she began to ask Kahlvik for his inevitable opinion, she felt a thrum from the spear.
Before embarking on this voyage, she would only carry the weapon when necessary, but now she bore it throughout the day.
Also, she had taken to sleeping with it within her grasp, much to Colvyn’s as yet unspoken disapproval.
The spirit put no words in Elvine’s head, but she felt it guide her hands as she tracked the iron point across the various fjords of the Snarls.
When it aligned with a channel to port, Elvine felt a warm rush of affirmation.
“There,” she told Kahlvik. Seeing his evident scepticism she straightened and spoke on in the Spear Maiden’s voice, “The Altvar command it.”
Throughout the following week, she remained at the prow during the hours of daylight.
Whenever the fjord they sailed diverged into two or more routes, the spear would show the way.
It also let out a warning thrum if the Ohlnir drew near a submerged reef.
Much, Elvine was sure, to Captain Veltta’s annoyance, the Chainbreaker had been instructed to follow the larger ship and stray no more than fifty yards from her stern.
It ensured an untroubled if slow onward passage, made slower by the continual absence of wind.
Several times, Kahlvik had been compelled to order oars unshipped when the sail hung limp on the mast. The Ohlnir proved surprisingly sluggish when propelled by oars, her captain explaining that she had been built for speed upon the open sea where the wind was most plentiful.
As a two-decked craft of deeper draught than most Ascarlian vessels, she proved ponderous with no wind to fill her sail, heralding a persistent chorus of insults from the direction of the Chainbreaker.
Captain Veltta was evidently growing frustrated at the pace, a sentiment that boiled over into disobedience when they rounded a bend to discover the broadest and deepest fjord yet encountered in the Snarls.
Oars sweeping fast, the smaller vessel altered her heading to draw level with the Ohlnir, Veltta waving at Kahlvik from the port rail. “We’ll scout it for you!” she called out as the Chainbreaker drew ahead.
“Ulfmaer curse that impudent slave,” Kahlvik fumed, but there was no hope of catching up as long as the wind remained thin.
Elvine watched the former Nihlvarian warship plough through the still waters until it had gained a mile or so on the Ohlnir, whereupon she noticed a sudden reduction in its speed.
Halting its port oars, the Chainbreaker performed a swift turn to starboard whereupon both banks took on an increased pace and the vessel rapidly disappeared around a steep shoulder of land.
“Increase to fast stroke!” Kahlvik called out, his crew letting out a stream of curses as they worked their oars with greater energy. As they drew closer to the headland, Elvine gripped the spear tighter but felt no particular alarm. If anything, she sensed a small pulse of interested anticipation.
“What is it?” she asked the spirit in a low mutter.
Something… new, came the vague response. Perhaps useful. Perhaps not. I suppose we shall see.