Chapter Forty-Seven Elvine
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Elvine
She woke to the feel of soft furs upon her back, the familiar sight of beams and planking confirming she was back in her nook aboard the Ohlnir. At first she thought herself still asleep, her mind having placed in her a comforting dream, but the sharp pain in her ribs quickly banished such notions.
“Spear Maiden?”
She paused in the act of wincing to find Varnyr looming above her, face set in concern.
“How long…?” Elvine gritted her teeth against the pain. “How long since we reached the ship?”
“No more than a day.”
“My brother? The others?”
“All safe.” Varnyr placed a large hand on her shoulder, trying to ease her back onto her bed of piled furs. “You need to rest…”
“Gruinskard,” Elvine cut in, pushing his hand away. “I must speak to him.”
Casting about for the spear, she found it propped against a nearby beam.
Grunting with the effort of sitting upright, she took the weapon and let out a shout of frustration as she tried and failed to lever herself to her feet.
“Help me,” she told Varnyr, who, after a moment’s reluctance, consented to pull her arm over his broad shoulders and raise her up.
She found Gruinskard in his habitual position at the prow with Colvyn at his side.
She endured an embrace from her brother before turning to the former Tielwald.
He greeted her with a grudgingly affable nod, one eye narrowing in what she thought might actually be pleasure at seeing her.
“An interesting tale your brother told me,” he said.
“Would I be wrong in assuming yours will be even more so?”
“You would not,” Elvine groaned, disentangling herself from Colvyn to rest against the rail. “But we have scant time for stories. You told me you could reach the queen in dreams. I need you to do so now.”
“It’s unlikely she will be sleeping…”
“Try!” Beset by a fresh wave of pain, Elvine sagged but forced herself to stare hard into Gruinskard’s eye. “If you can’t reach her, everything we have won, and lost, will have been utterly wasted.”
He began to voice a disparaging laugh but the Spear Maiden’s implacable glare gave him pause. “I must also be asleep and dreaming for it to work,” he said.
“We can drug you,” Elvine said. “Or Varnyr can knock you unconscious…”
“No.” Gruinskard straightened, growling his next words with hard-edged authority. “He will not.”
“We’ve no time for your pride, you selfish old bastard!
” Elvine lurched towards him, the resultant jolt of pain making her stumble.
Varnyr caught her before she fell and she spent a moment gasping in his arms while keeping her baleful gaze fixed on Gruinskard.
She began to voice her intention to have his remaining eye plucked out if he continued to resist, then stopped when the spirit in the spear spoke for the first time since her waking.
He’s right, child. If your queen is awake, he cannot reach her.
“We have to try…”
There is another way. Though I doubt he’ll like it any better.
Gruinskard eyed the spear lying on the deck boards between them with unconcealed repugnance. They sat together on the lower deck, Elvine having insisted they be alone for this task. So far, the old man had given no firm agreement to her plan.
“The last time I touched this thing,” he said, “I had a sense that if I continued to do so for much longer, it might decide to kill me.”
“She doesn’t like you,” Elvine admitted. “But has promised she will do you no harm.”
“I note your careful choice of words, Spear Maiden,” Gruinskard said. “You promise the spear won’t harm me, but make no assurances that I will suffer no harm should I do this.”
“I can make the most firm assurance of the harm that will result if you do not.”
“Never have I dreamed while awake.” He extended his hand to the spear but didn’t touch it, Elvine finding herself shocked to see the tremble of his fingers.
Torture at the hands of Lore’s fanatic servants had barely changed his demeanour, yet this he feared.
“If what dwells within this weapon is so powerful, why does it need me?” he asked. “Can you not do it?”
“She says it must be both of us. Only you have a connection to Queen Thera’s mind. Only I have the memory of the vision I received in the Veyinmihr.”
“But still, the risks.” His hand continued to hover over the spear’s haft. “If we invade her mind while she’s awake—”
“She dies if we do not!” Elvine cut in, slamming her palms to the deck. “All who have followed her to Nihlvar will perish and the world entire shall know what it is to dwell in a realm of darkness and suffering. This have I seen.” She shifted her hands to the spear, grasping it hard. “Now, do it.”
Gruinskard hesitated a moment longer, beard fluttering as he exhaled a ragged breath, then he added his grip to hers.
Elvine felt an instant blossoming of the spear’s power.
So, clearly, did Gruinskard. Flinching, he tried to draw back his arm, but his hand refused to budge.
Do not fight me! the spirit told him, her usually warm tones now harsh with command.
Calm yourself, and turn your thoughts to your great-granddaughter.
The old man continued to struggle for a time, his knuckles turning white, until he let out a guttural snarl of defeat. “I feel it in my head,” he grunted. His rage at the intrusion was palpable, but his hand no longer trembled.
“Do as she says,” Elvine told him. “Your thoughts will lead us to the queen.”
Grinding his jaw, Gruinskard closed his eyes.
After a short pause, Elvine felt fresh images swirl in her own mind and followed suit.
The waking world slipped away to leave her tumbling through a tunnel formed of shifting shadow.
She sensed rather than saw Gruinskard’s presence close by, finding she could perceive his struggle to remain calm.
As they flew through the tunnel, she noticed that the walls were fashioned from images.
Although distorted and stretched, she made out faces as they streaked by, some laughing, most not, some set in anger, others streaked in blood and close to death.
One in particular caught her eye: that perverted wretch Coelnyr clutching at his torn throat in Olversahl, staring up in astonishment at the man who had delivered the fatal blow.
The old man’s memories, she realised, which explained why there were so many stricken, dying faces among the melange streaking by.
She began searching for one in particular, one she thought would be prominent among this parade of betrayed, angered, or murdered souls.
Perhaps he only remembers his victims with true clarity, she thought.
Or prefers not to think of his great-granddaughter much at all.
“Find her!” she called out to Gruinskard, not knowing whether her voice could even be heard in this conjuration of memories. The flare of resentful annoyance that came from her companion confirmed that he understood either the words or the sentiment.
She saw something flare in the otherwise blank depths of the tunnel, a glimmer that grew into a star as they hurtled closer.
Soon it filled her vision with a flickering glow, separating into a plane of different, swirling hues.
Elvine came to a sudden, jarring halt when the churn of colour and light solidified into an image of stark clarity. Thera!
This, however, was not the handsome, sometimes forbidding visage of a queen she knew, but that of a girl not yet fourteen summers old.
Her face was besmirched with soot, her hair matted with dirt and damp.
Behind her, a large building burned. It was a structure Elvine had never seen but heard her mother speak of so often she had little difficulty in identifying the Library of King Aeric.
Once the jewel of Olversahl, it had been reduced to ash the night of the city’s liberation from the Albermaine-ish yoke.
“My mother,” the young Thera said, her voice a tired croak. “My father.”
“Feasting in the Halls of Aevnir,” an unseen speaker replied, Elvine recognising the gruff, grudging tones of Margnus Gruinskard. “They have done you great credit this night. But you, Thera…” A large hand descended onto the girl’s shoulder. “You have won immortal renown…”
“I don’t want renown!” She shoved his hand away and stepped back.
Her eyes blazed in accusation as she spoke on, Elvine feeling Gruinskard shudder as the words struck home, “I want my mother, but you have killed her! She warned me it would be this way. She told me your endless scheming would see us to ruin!”
The image began to fade, Elvine sensing Gruinskard withdrawing, unable to bear the weight of this memory.
Stop! the spirit in the spear commanded, and the memory froze. Elvine felt the power of the spear build, propelling both she and Gruinskard into the memory. Reach for her, the spirit commanded. And I shall do the rest.